2013 Volume 16 Pages 1-10
Commercial high schools have been promoting experiential and practical forms of training, such as selling goods, in their education for a long time. The Ministry of Education’s official guidelines for instruction have recently been putting special emphasis on “securing opportunities for work experience,” making internship look like the center of education for commercial high school students. However, practice in selling goods is an important component of learning for commercial high school students with its specific purpose and goals, even though it is less widely practiced than internship. This article will examine internship and business training and their respective effects through responses to questionnaires given to students in two commercial high schools who have had both types of work experience. The aim is to determine which is more desirable, the coexistence of two kinds of work experiences or their integration into a single program, on the basis that the two have similar effects. According to the questionnaire data I have collected, there are significant differences in four categories. The prominent merit of internship is that it gives students a more specific idea about their future careers, whereas business training characteristically makes students realize the importance of achieving specific goals through teamwork and cooperation.
