NCJ Number
72037
Journal
Police Chief Volume: 67 Issue: 9 Dated: (September 1980) Pages: 48-52
Date Published
1980
Length
5 pages
Annotation
Police instructors are advised to improve their teaching and student learning by being sensitive to student self-respect and needs, fostering motivation, applying theory to practice, and using various teaching aids.
Abstract
Police instruction is often bad, but recent improvements in training police instructors in New York have led to some good advice for instructors. Police trainees should be viewed as mature adults who need to be respected and helped to learn. Instructors should act as facilitators, should encourage trainees to participate, and should minimize classroom anxieties to protect the trainee's self-image and to foster learning. Good instructors are sensitive to students, aware of their own motivations, seek to understand their students' expectations and needs, make known the objectives of the course of study, and tells their students what they will learn. Because trainees learn faster and better when more than one of the senses is stimulated, a variety of teaching aids should be used. Instructors should minimize negative knowledge transfer, or trainees' resistance to learning because of prior learning, by presenting new methods as better methods. New learning will be most effective if trainees can apply what they learn. Finally, class participation should be encouraged by role playing, case studies, and instructor questions that encourage discussion.