Police Recruit Training
Facilitating Learning Between the Academy and Field Training- FBI Repot
By Steven Hundersmarck, Ph.D.
Police recruit training occurs across multiple learning activities; it begins in the classroom and ends with hands-on field experience. Many assume that such training is both progressive and congruent. Within six to eight months, cadets enter and leave the academy classroom to take part in field training. This transition involves consciously leaving behind past experience and identity as a cadet, becoming part of a new organization, and building a new identity as an officer. Therefore, learning is not part of a linear process but, rather, must be extended across the academy and into field training. Although much of the related literature has focused on learning within each independent activity with the belief that individuals will transfer knowledge, there is a growing awareness that organizations should concentrate more on how learning extends or generalizes across activities, as well as how to facilitate it.
The author gathered data from a study he conducted in Michigan in a regional police academy and during field training in a mid-sized department that employs over 200 sworn officers. He selected 10 cadets quasi-randomly based on their prior police experience and whether they were employed by a department before entering the academy. During the 16 weeks of classes, the author observed these participants and collected data from them during structured interviews at various points. He also interviewed academy personnel and instructors, attended a number of classes, and studied daily recruit life.
During the second phase of the research project, the author followed two of the original 10 recruits into the field training program. He rode with them and their training officers, recorded 13 hours of training discourse, and transcribed them into 49 pages of dialogue. He then coded the dialogue to determine if recruits and field training officers discussed academy learning and to establish what teaching techniques field training officers used to teach recruits.
