Utilising police knowledge and skills: Experiences from police practitioners studying a police specific degree

This article presents preliminary findings from a longitudinal study contributing to the current debate about police education and professionalising the police in England and Wales. The findings in this article are taken from a survey administered in 2016 to third-year students enrolled in a policing degree. Surveys were distributed to police officer students in the last year of their degree programme asking for their perceptions of the degree, their organisation's support for their learning and how they felt that learning was utilised in their workplace. Supplementary to the survey, interviews were conducted with the students after their graduation in 2018. The research findings suggest that students perceived the benefits of obtaining a degree-level qualification as fundamentally important to their professional development and personal decision-making at work. Early support initially received for study leave purposes, rarely extended beyond this practical provision. The extent to which police organisations valued the learning from the degree was perceived to be lacking. Senior-ranked students were more likely to be able to use and promote their newly acquired skills and knowledge in the workplace compared with lower-ranked students. Such findings may inform scholars’ and practitioners’ continued evaluation of police education reforms in England and Wales.

POLICE EDUCATION IN THE SECOND REPUBLIC OF POLAND — OUTLINE OF THE PROBLEM

The text is concerned with the history of police education in 1919–1939. The reconstruction of Polish statehood after World War I involved the establishment of a service responsible for security and order in the country in 1919. Parallel to the organisation of the State Police, work on the creation of a modern system of police education continued. Throughout the period of this force’s existence, many reorganisations were made in order to create a system that would ensure the professional preparation of police offi cers for service. The article presents only an outline of the changes related to police education in the interwar period, and does not fully exhaust this subject matter.

Police education and role play: Insights from the literature

This article provides a literature review into the utilisation of role play and reflection, as valuable teaching strategies which should be considered for implementation, within the Police Education Qualification Framework. The aim of this article is to challenge the current pedagogical teaching methods utilised as part of the National Policing Curriculum, by highlighting the benefit of a more experiential-based learning strategy, for Professional Policing Degree students, based within England and Wales.

UNIVERSITY EDUCATION AS A MODERN EUROPEAN TREND OF INITIAL POLICE TRAINING

The article is devoted to the issues of police education reform. Modern countries have different models of initial police training, based on their historical traditions and modern conditions of functioning of states. The author explored the current situation of police training in England, focusing on the Initial Police Learning and Development Program (IPLDP), because this program was the main among all other police training programs, but now this program is outdated. The author revealed that the current trend in the world is to increase the role of higher education institutions in the education system for training police officers. The example of England and Wales shows that the system of initial training, which is based on short-term training at the level of the police academy with subsequent service in practical units, does not meet the needs of the time and is outdated. The global trend is to reorient police training from specific practical knowledge, skills and abilities to higher education and the formation of a person with critical thinking and analytical skills, which meets the current challenges facing the police in the fight against crime. The author argues that such training can be carried out only with the involvement of higher education institutions. As examples, some empirical studies confirm this fact. It is pointed out that it is very important for a modern police officer to perform not only a profession, but also an education in this field in order to perform his / her duties. The author analyzes the opinions of foreign researchers on the advantages of university education over training in police academies. The author touches on the issue of reforming police education in Ukraine in terms of introducing a three-level model of police training and proposes to conduct additional research on both modern foreign experience and the advantages, disadvantages and prospects of the proposed model.

Informal Workplace Learning in Swedish Police Education– A Teacher Perspective

In the literature, informal learning is considered to be of great importance to employees’ development of workplace learning. The aim of this study, which involves respondents from a Swedish police education unit, was to contribute knowledge about Swedish police education teachers’ informal learning as regards conditions for learning, learning activities and learning experiences resulting from their engagement in these activities. The results of the study are based on daily digital logbook notes made by 25 police and university teachers during one month and subsequent interviews with these teachers. The main conclusions can be summarised as follows: 1) The culture, structure and materials of the workplace are important parts of teachers’ conditions for informal learning. 2) The teachers’ informal learning activities are characterised by intentional learning, where supporting interactions with colleagues in their own teams and other, more knowledgeable, colleagues are highly valued. Furthermore, the most common triggers for teachers’ informal learning are issues relating to pedagogy and digital technology, and face-to-face contacts with colleagues are preferred. 3) The police teachers describe their learning experiences made in the course of informal learning activities as a transition from an instructor-based to a teaching-oriented approach, while the learning of the university teachers is focused on contextualisation of their teaching by integrating academic knowledge into the police practice. The article concludes with a brief discussion about the possibilities and limitations of informal learning.

Is there ‘discretionary space’ in rank-based police constabularies for graduate constables to think critically and make autonomous decisions?

The Police Education and Qualification Framework (PEFQ) mandated that from 2020 police recruits must be educated to degree level. This change has generated much debate around the relationship between academia and the police. There has been less discussion about parallel organisational change. To explore the opportunities for graduate officers to find the ‘discretionary space’ to employ the skills associated with university study, 234 police constables were surveyed. Analysis revealed that officers faced barriers to decision-making from bureaucratic and managerial procedures. Findings suggest that police organisations may need to make changes structurally and procedurally to benefit from a graduate workforce.

Holder Norsk politiutdanning mål (slik politiet selv vurderer den)?

The Norwegian Police University College is required to regularly evaluate and ensure the quality of the education in order to maintain its accreditation as an institution of higher education. A central aspect of this quality control is to make sure that the education is relevant for the field of practice and the policing profession. The Police University College has therefore on three occasions since 2006 sent out a survey to police officers three years after graduation and asked them to evaluate the relevance of the education in general, and more specifically to evaluate their own qualifications in different areas of competence. A similar questionnaire was sent to the supervisors of the post-graduates to get a broader comparative perspective. The overarching aim of this article is to find out to what degree newly educated police officers and their leaders perceive the police education to provide a sufficient preparation for the police profession. To shed light on this question we will present and analyse data from the “quality surveys” mentioned above, but mainly from the 2015 survey. Overall, the findings presented in the article suggest thatboth the newly educated police officers and their leaders generally perceive the education to provide a sufficient preparation for the police profession. However, the leaders tend to give a better score than the newly educated police officers both overall and on specific qualification. Moreover, when looking into specific areas of competences we find that both groups tend to give the lowest scores on physical and operational qualifications such as use of firearms. A discussion of possible causes and implications of the findings is included in the article.

POLICE TRAINING TO POLICE EDUCATION: A PARADIGM SHIFT IN POLICE CURRICULUM

Police Education and Training is central to the successful realization of the constitutional democracy and protection of human rights. An attempt is made in this paper to evolve a curriculum framework for a people-sensitive Police Training and Education. One of the important objectives of this framework is to search for quality, standards, guidelines, and a general conceptual platform for improving basic Police Education and Training. This paper also aims at identifying general curricular parameters related to the development of a culture of policing, making policing practices more democratic and public-oriented to ensure greater security and more effective crime prevention. This paper argues that it is illogical, detrimental, and undesirable to separate police training from police education. Since policing is a highly respected professional field like medicine, it is imperative to integrate knowledge about society, dynamics of social and geopolitical spaces and human development from the complex socio-political perspective with police ethics and social and civic responsibilities and so on. In conclusion, this paper shows how people-sensitive and philosophically sound curricular policy for police education would serve people, communities, and societies. The ideas and insights in this paper are derived from the best practices available in the country and across the globe.

Police Education in the United Kingdom: Challenges and Future Directions

This chapter outlines the historical development of police education in the United Kingdom, more precisely in England and Wales, and highlights new strategies and planning for the professional development of the police. There is a plethora of research carried out regarding professionalism in policing to meet the needs and challenges of the twenty-first century. Considering the recent developments in police education and training, this chapter mainly discusses three newly introduced routes for recruitment and education of police constables under the Policing Education Qualifications Framework (PEQF), namely Police Constable Degree Apprenticeship (PCDA), Degree Holder Entry Programme (DHEP), and Pre-Join Degree (PJD). Higher education institutions (HEIs), in partnership with the police forces, are providing professional qualifications for policing as a graduate level profession. Though they have made remarkable progress in developing police education programmes, they are facing various challenges in implementing the qualification framework. This chapter also explores pedagogical aspects of police education including the effectiveness and contrast between different forms of teaching and learning. While featuring the challenges and prospects of the new police education programmes, this chapter also outlines different aspects of partnership for delivering these professional qualification programmes.