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Internships are an essential element of initial teacher training programmes, contributing not only to student teachers’ skill development, but also to their career guidance, job placement and, of course, to the improvement of our educational system quality. However, there is little empirical evidence about both the factors affecting skills acquisition during in-school internships and the required conditions for assuring the quality of these training periods.

The aim of this study, published in the Revista de Educación of the Ministry of Education(Rodríguez-Gómez, Armengol & Meneses, 2017), and developed as part of the project "Evaluation of the effects and impact of curricular practices in teacher training and training centers" (ref. 2014ARMIF00023), coordinated by prof. Joaquín Gairín, is to identify factors promoting better professional skills development during the internship period within the Early Childhood Education and Primary Education Bachelor’s degrees.

The field study of this research took place during the 2014-2015 academic year and consisted of applying a questionnaire to a sample of 567 students from the Primary Education (276) and Early Childhood Education (291) Bachelor’s degrees in four Catalan universities (two public and two private) that cover a wide network of both public and state-subsidised private internship centres.

The results of this study enable us to confirm that, in addition to the type (intensive or extensive) or the placement of the practicum in the degree studies (distributed evenly throughout the programme, or concentrated in the last two years), the identification of that which some authors have called “training centres” (e.g., Conroy, Hulme & Menter, 2013), the involvement of the tutor from the centre or the mentor (Jaspers, Meijer, Prins y Wubbels, 2014), the psychological and emotional support received during their internship (Sorensen, 2014) and the consolidation of effective cooperation structures between all the agents involved, are some key elements for a successful internship period.

University and school are responsible for preparing the students to professionally execute their role as teachers. To do so, a debate is required about the relationship between both educational institutions, giving rise to new spaces and ways of collaboration and training that result in an improvement in our educational system.