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ABSTRACT
Based on in-depth interviews regarding 12 police students’ experience from in-field training, the present study seeks to uncover the meaning and content of what matters when learning police work in practice. Deeply rooted in the students’ experience of participating in in-field training, the present paper presents findings from the following issue: How do police students experience participation and relationship during in-field training? The question has as its starting point sociocultural theory regarding learning professional practice. The analysis generates findings as follows: to be put in front, tutoring as on-going descriptive conversations and to be taken care of. The paper draws on this conceptual structure as a springboard for the ongoing discussion about what matters in educating students undergoing police training in higher education, and in particular the significance of embodied learning and professional and emotional support in learning the police profession.
Acknowledgments
We wish to thank the following persons for comments and suggestions on the paper: Erik Christensen, Oddbjørg Edvardsen, Tina Handegård, Nick Ingham and reviewers for reading and commenting on the paper.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.
Notes
1. The students spend time at different divisions of the police station, for instance investigation, preventive, and operative police work. In addition, the students spend three weeks in community placements, such as child welfare services, prisons, and various psychiatric institutions. In sum, students and tutors spend approximately 17 weeks (out of 42) together.
2. The corresponding author of the paper recently conducted a study of tutors’ experiences from mentoring students during in-field training (Hoel, Citationn.d.). The article is available by contacting the author.
3. For further reading on guidelines relating to sample size in qualitative studies, see Guest, Guest et al. (Citation2006).
4. Annually, NOKUT conduct evaluations of the study programmes in various higher education institutions. For several years, the police students are the ones who report being most satisfied with their education, and especially the in-field training (Bakken et al., Citation2019).
5. This was due to organizational circumstances For instance, one of the tutors joined an international operation.
6. To understand the significance of the on-going talks in the patrol car, it can be helpful to look at ethnographic studies about storytelling in the police. The work of Smith, Pedersen, and Burnett (Citation2014, p. 4) on police narratives shows that story telling is an ‘organisational learning process of “knowing through narratives”’. What’s more, they claim that ‘telling stories can also be a way of processing a particular experience, and can be told for a variety of purposes’ (Smith et al., Citation2014, p. 4). Another study (Van Hulst, Citation2013, p. 626) of police storytelling underlines the significance of stories among recruits:
(…), recruits hear stories from their mentors in the field. They also are informed about the kinds of mistakes one can make and how one can protect oneself and others from making them. In sum, listening to stories and discussing them are an important way for young officers to get acquainted with and integrate into the police occupational culture.
Stories work as containers for ‘values and beliefs that police officers uphold’ (Van Hulst, Citation2013, p. 625), and Smith et al. (Citation2014) show that storytelling is important for professional development. The in front position and the on-going talks in the patrol car are structured resources in the field of policing that form the students into full members of the organization.
Additional information
Notes on contributors
Linda Hoel
Linda Hoel associate professor at the Norwegian Police University College at bachelor program of police studies. She received her master degree in pedagogic from the University of Tromsø, Norway and a Fulbright Scholarship in pedagogic (University of California, Santa Barbara). Her doctorate was received from Nord University, Norway in the Studies of professional practice. She has published the book Politiarbeid i praksis. Politibetjenters erfaringer [Practical police work. Police officers’ experiences] (2013). She has also worked as leader for a research group in Education, organisation and leadership at the Norwegian police university college. Her research themes are students’ learning and development, police accountability, police ethics, operative police work and crisis management.