Knowledge from the experience of a police officer: a grounded study

Author(s):

Patrizio Bosio

Conference:

ECER 2009

Network:

2. Vocational Education and Training (VETNET)

Format:

Paper

Session Information

02 SES 11 A, Developing personnel in different settings: from training of trainers up to vocational higher education

Paper Session

Time:

2009-09-30

16:45-18:15

Room:

HG, HS 23

Chair:

Magdolna Benke

Contribution

The object of this qualitative research study is to highlight the experiential knowledge of police officers serving in the patrolling squad. The study was generated by the following questions: what knowledge comes from the experience of a patroller? What are its features? What procedures, concepts and meanings lead the operator’s actions? What dispositions can help the enhancement of such knowledge? How to enhance the knowledge from experience, within the institution? The everyday experience of a police officer is imbued with grey areas and with excellent, albeit concealed, knowledge. Within this experience we can spot a «tacit» (See Polanyi 1965; 1979: 4), subliminal or implicit presence of forms and elements of knowledge that operate at the same speed of the gesture that embodies them, or the gaze that carries them, or the word that speaks of them. However, all the knowledge built up by the hard work of police officers is often lacking adequate testimony and visibility. (See Mortari 2003: 20). The attempt to focus on the experiential knowledge in this professional area is an act of “epistemology of practice”(See Schön 1983: 7), an attempt to go back to the founding premises of the operators’ daily knowledge, and the cognitive and emotional processes activated when their mind is involved in the solution of problematic situations. In order to single out this experience and make it the object of a rational investigation, as pointed out by other authors (See e.g. Dewey 1916 e 1933; Arendt 1978, tr. it. 1987; Schön 1983, tr. it. 1987; Jedlowski 1994; Vino 2001: 83; Mortari 2003), it is necessary to take the experienced present as an object of reflection: we ought to put ourselves in a thoughtful listening mode towards our cognitive and emotional lives (See Mortari 2003: 16-17). The knowledge from experience emerges when the ideas and the strategies that structure it underlie the form of a reflective practice around one’s life experience. If life is the flow of things happening to each of us, experience exists wherever life is accompanied by thought.

Method

With regards to the way to bring forward the knowledge that constitutes the participants’ experience, the following methods have been suggested: the Grounded Theory Research on three levels of coding data - initial, selective and axial- (See Glaser, Strauss 1965 and 1967; Strauss, Corbin 1990; Charmaz 2001 and 2006), and the narrative interview technique (See Atkinson 2002), based on the reflective model suggested by Johns (2000). The narrative interview facilitates the access to the participant’s world, through the narration of what has occurred during a specific experience, and the description of what a participant has experienced at that moment. The interview implies the wording of the experience and promotes a distancing from it, consequently allowing to recognize the tacit knowledge contained in it.

Expected Outcomes

Firstly, the analysis of the experience has shown two strong components of knowledge, which originate two profiles. The first is made of elements of knowledge that express the «formal rigour» of knowledge and is symbolized by the interpretative category: «Following operative procedures and acting according to institutionalized principles. The second profile is characterized by a «pertinence to the situation», symbolized by the data in the category: «Keeping an open attitude towards problematic situations». The discovery of this category allows us to assume that the codes of technical knowledge, although necessary, are not sufficient to account for the processes of creation and implementation of experiential knowledge. All the evidence lead us to believe that experience acts in this particular sector of public security as a true «master of life», «a source of knowlwdge» for many police officers, where any formal or informal plays an important role in their grip of reality.

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Author Information

Patrizio Bosio

Università degli Studi di Verona

Dipartimento di Scienze dell'Educazione

Bianzano (BG)

104

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