A lesson to learn? A study of how various ranks and police leaders understand and relate to experience-based learning

ABSTRACT

Improvement through experience-based learning is on the agenda of the Norwegian police. This paper will examine how ‘experience-based learning’ is understood and practiced by police leaders of different ranks within crisis management. The study’s analysis is based on in-depth interviews with Incident Management (IM) police staff members, such as the district chief of police, the chief of IM staff and the control room supervisors. The paper presents three findings. First, the analysis shows there is a difference in the various police ranks in the perception of the term. Second, the police leaders, across the ranks, share an understanding that the police are not sufficiently good at learning and developing practice from experience due to cultural issues within the organisation. Third, there are differences in police leaders’ views as to the extent to which closing reports form the basis for changes in practice. The paper discusses the conditions required for experience-based learning as an approach to developing crisis management in the police. The paper argues that improving the police service through experience requires that leaders share a common understanding of the term ‘experience-based learning’ and its pre-condition such as reflection. The paper suggests that it is necessary for police leaders responsible for EBL to get an opportunity to learn how to learn from EBL, preferably by attending higher education. In this way, the facilitation of EBL can be based on epistemological theory and science.

KEYWORDS:

• Experience-based learning
• police leaders
• crisis management
• evaluation

Acknowledgment

We wish to thank the following persons for comments and suggestions on the paper: Brita Bjørkelo, Tina Handegård, Charlotte Ryen Berg, Jana Prochotska, Nick Ingham and the anonymous referees for reading and commenting on the paper.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 According to Andresen et al. (2000, p. 9), experience-based learning, experiential learning and learning from experience share almost the same meaning. In this paper, the terms are regarded as full synonyms.

2 For a fuller description of the Norwegian police preparedness system, staff functions and the IM staff development programme, see Hoel and Barland (2017).

3 Professional standards refer to ‘collective normative values, procedures and process’ (Valland 2015, p. 11).

4 The police in Norway works continually with the improvement of evaluation. We are aware of the new evaluation procedures developed, the gap-analysis form, yet at the time this research was conducted, the gap-analysis form was in the first phase of implementation.

5 PBS web is an electronic reference portal where PEPS I, II and III are published (Police Directorate 2011, p. 22).

6 It may also be worth mentioning that the chief of IM staff in the same police district as the chief of police, admits that he never logs in at the PEPS web to update on the latest results.

7 For further reading about experience-based learning in groups vs individuals, see Petterson’s (2016, p. 74) study of the Swedish Armed Forces. Her findings show that ‘critical discussion in groups tends to produce somewhat more mature reports’.

8 In the data of the programme evaluation (Hoel and Barland 2017), there was one rare statement from a staff member asking for academic knowledge relating to central aspects of IM staff work: so, if we only work with EBL, then it’s clear that it’s a bit too narrowly built on what you experienced during the incidents you were part of, so I’d also want more knowledge from outside of that. I want more academic knowledge – it’s rather strange to me that we don’t do any decision-making theory or groupthink theory etc. in a IM staff programme.

The statement above shows an understanding of the limitations of experience in the acquisition of new knowledge. This understanding was the only one in our data, so this is not a representative understanding among the 30 informants.

9 The police leaders’ attitude reflects a change from leadership to management. Change of leadership is relevant to discussion in relation to learning; however, it is not relevant in this case due to the research question.

10 The phrase to ‘speak the same language’ – in this context, is inspired by Telep and Somers (2017)

11 See Rantatalo and Karp’s (2016, p. 720) study of reflective practices and ‘how collective reflection processes can be understood as practically anchored’.