David Sjöberg

Why don’t they catch the baby? A study of a simulation of a critical incident in police education

Vocational education should prepare students for the professional demands of the work. In police education, one way to accomplish this is to simulate specific situations so that students may develop professional knowledge. This article aims to increase the understanding of how simulations support learning of knowledge and skills by investigating how participants make sense of the critical incident they are involved in. To accomplish this, in this study, we have focused on the actions and utterances of the participants. We also used video analysis to analyse the actions of a student police patrol in a simulated critical incident. The participants’ passive actions did not fully mimic a critical incident suggesting that they defined the situation as a passive educational situation. The results demonstrated that simulation-based exercises’ possibilities for supporting vocational learning depend on such factors as authenticity, role-playing and ‘simulation competency’.

The impact of preparation: conditions for developing professional knowledge through simulations

This article examines simulations of critical incidents in police education by investigating how activities in the preparation phase influence participants’ actions and thus the conditions for learning professional knowledge. The study is based on interviews in two stages (traditional and stimulated recall interviews) with six selected students and video analysis of one student police patrol’s short-term preparation. The results showed that simulation and associated activities informed the students of their responsibilities and pre-determined tasks without effectively helping them to cope with the situation. The analysis suggests that an understanding of the social and interactional requirements for producing the kind of situation that the students were to be trained for and learn from were not mediated. Thus our conclusion is that good conditions for learning in and through simulations require a simulation competence among the participants and that it is a responsibility of the instructors to consider how this competence is to be developed.

Supporting roles in live simulations : how observers and confederates can facilitate learning

ABSTRACT Live simulations in which students perform the roles of future professionals or act as confederates (i.e. student actors) are important training activities in different types of vocational education. While previous research has focused on the learning of students who enact a professional, secondary roles in scenario training, such as student observers and confederates, have received inadequate attention. The present study focuses on student observers and confederates in order to examine how these roles can support the learning of other participants in live simulations and to determine how the experience of performing these roles can become a learning experience for the performers. A total of 15 individual interviews and 1 group interview of students attending Swedish police training were conducted. The study findings indicated that the observer role is characterised by distance and detachment, and the confederate role by directness and sensory involvement. Both roles can support as well as inhibit intentional learning for primary participants and offer learning experiences for those playing the roles. The study theorises these roles and lists practical implications for planning live simulations in vocational education and training.

Developing police students’ professional knowing through scenario training : The impact of preparation, implementation and debriefing

When educating new police officers, using scenario training is an integral part of the educational program including a variety of practical exercises where students´ should act as police officers. ...