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Police training revisited –
Meeting the demands of conflict training in police with an alternative pedagogical
approach
Swen Koerner & Mario S. Staller
This is a post-peer-review, pre-copyedit version of an article published in Policing: A Journal
of Policy and Practice, https://doi.org/10.1093/police/paaa080
Abstract
Whilst operational actions place high demands on police officers, conflict training aims to
prepare them for the demands of deployment and thus forms the central hinge between
professional practice and education. However, international data suggests a problem: The
transfer of competence between training and deployment must be improved. The following
article identifies pedagogical design and practice as the key factors in making this leap. To
illustrate this point, the evidence-based Constraints-led approach (CLA) is introduced. By
dealing with key concepts as well as the practical implications of the CLA for conflict training
in police, the article provides an orientation for police trainers and their practice as well as for
the further professionalization of police training.
Keywords: conflict training, police training, representative learning design, skill acquisition,
nonlinear pedagogy, constraints-led approach
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Introduction
Operational actions place high demands on police officers. For example, identity checks during
mass public disorder require targeted communication, sound tactical behavior and emotional
intelligence. Within fractions of a second, situational demands can change, overlap and
possibly lead to the use force. Empirical data on violent conflicts indicates that physical attacks
on police officers emerge suddenly and are often unexpected, accompanied by a high degree
of aggressiveness and situational dynamics (Jager et al. 2013; Renden et al. 2015). Police
training
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aims at preparing law enforcement officers for the demands of deployment (Koedijk
et al. 2019) and thus forms the key integrative mechanism between education and
professional practice. However, international data (Jager, Klatt, & Bliesener 2013; Renden,
Nieuwenhuys, et al. 2015) point to problems: The transfer of competence between training
and the field is lacking.
More recent studies argue (Cushion 2018) that, next to contextual factors such as time and
human resources, the pedagogical aspects of training play a decisive role in a law enforcement
officer´s skill development. Based on empirical data and framed by a professional coaching
model for conflict management training in the context of police work (Staller 2020), the
following article identifies the pedagogy of training as a key factor for the acquisition and
transfer of competencies. In this regard, the internationally known Constraints-led approach,
or CLA, (Renshaw & Chow 2019) applied in sports science and sports is introduced. By
discussing key concepts and principles, current empirical findings as well as the practical
implications of CLA for police training, the article provides orientation for police trainers and
their practice as well as for the further professionalization of their training.
The pedagogical issue
Police training aims at imparting competences that can be stably retrieved when their
application is needed in the field. Yet the extent to which training meets the demands of the
operational environment and performs as the expected integrative mechanism has hardly
been investigated. Nevertheless, existing data (Jager, Klatt, Bliesener, et al. 2013; Renden et
al. 2017; Renden, Landman, et al. 2015) indicates a lack of transfer between police training
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and the field. In a recent pilot study focusing on real-life conflicts experienced in deployment,
20 out of 21 German federal police officers stated that police training had not adequately
prepared them for the types of conflict dynamics that have occurred (Körner & Staller 2019a).
The reasons for difficulty in the transfer between training and deployment are numerous.
Perceived from the perspective of individual police officers, for example a lack of training time
prevents the automatization of operational techniques (Jager, Klatt, Bliesener, et al. 2013;
Körner & Staller 2019). Besides insufficient time, the content taught in training sessions must
also be questioned (Jager, Klatt, Bliesener, et al. 2013; Renden et al. 2017; Renden, Landman,
et al. 2015). Starting points for optimizing the relationship between training and deployment
would therefore be to increase the time allotted for training and/or to revise the content
taught towards a more reality-based approach (Renden, Landman, et al. 2015; Cushion 2018).
However, empirical data clearly indicates that time and curriculum cannot be considered
independently of the chosen teaching method and its underlying pedagogy. For example, in a
case study with regards to officer safety training (OST) in the UK, Cushion (2018) found that
officers spent 54% of the training time learning passively, and when they were active, they
were occupied with content that was neither linked nor transferred to real-life scenarios. As
he points out, this training has been served "in a piecemeal and disjointed fashion" (p. 7),
participating police officers were only expected to listen, absorb and imitate the trainer. A
recent time-on-task analysis of 16 consecutive hours of self-defense and arrest training with
German police recruits revealed that only 23% was spent on active learning, i.e. 77% of the
training time was not spent on activities preparing them for deployment (Staller & Körner
2019). In this case the training was characterized by a linear, trainer-centered teaching
method and pedagogy. Taken together, the empirical data suggest that a single revision of
content or increasing the amount of time is neither sufficient nor appropriate. Instead, we
argue that an economic use of time resources and a functional integration of training content
that is geared to the requirements of the operational environment is largely dependent on
the chosen teaching method and pedagogy.
This argument can be supported and developed by a coaching model developed by Muir and
colleagues (2011), originally related to sport and recently modified for combative and police
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contexts (Staller 2020). Within this model, police training can be characterized as a complex
decision-making process that places high demands on the individual trainer and organizational
coach development. In essence, police trainers have to meet a) the factual requirements of
the criterion environment (what-dimension), b) the individual prerequisites of the learners
(who-dimension) as well as c) the demand of designing methodologically and pedagogically
sound learning environments (how-dimension). It is important to note that coaching
competence requires police trainers not only to make well-founded decisions in each
individual content area, but also to coordinate relevant decisions in all single dimensions and
place them in a meaningful overall context. For instance, when resembling ambiguity,
increased pressure and chaotic circumstances in police training (what dimension), the learners
physical, tactical and social capabilities have to be considered (who dimension) and the
delivery methods (how dimension) must be adjusted accordingly.
As the current COVID-19 pandemic has made clear, police training does not occur in a vacuum,
but is strongly linked to, and influenced by, its socio-cultural surroundings (context-
dimension). SarsCov-2 has massively altered the context of contemporary police training and
led to a lockdown of normal training procedures. The extent to which trainers cognitively open
themselves to the situation and see the crisis as an opportunity to learn depends on their
personal attitudes and mindset (self-dimension). If police trainers have treated the crisis as a
chance for individual development and created solutions for continuing training under
conditions of physical distance, pedagogical knowledge and expertise is required above all
(Figure 1; Körner & Staller, 2020a).
Figure 1: Professional coaching model for conflict management training in the context of police (Staller 2020)
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While the COVID-19 crisis points to challenges that clearly require efforts that go far beyond
the normal level, police training is first and foremost an institutionalized learning process
(Basham 2014; Cushion 2018). As such, it requires a high degree of pedagogical competence
on the part of the trainer. However, data from a German case study show that pedagogy is
structurally neglected in the education of law enforcement trainers and comprises only a small
part of the educational curriculum, while at the same time trainers emphasize the great
practical importance of pedagogy for performance in their profession (Körner et al. 2019).
In addition, a recent study on career paths of German police trainers (Körner & Staller 2019b)
points to a further structural deficit, which mainly touches aspects of pedagogical
competencies. The trainers interviewed in this study stated that they were selected for the
profession because of their specific biographical background as martial artists and/or sports
marksmen and/or because of their experience in special units. In connection with the meager
pedagogical content within the educational curriculum of police trainers, it can be assumed
that the training design most often employed are a result of the trainers' past experiences as
learners in their respective settings (Hoy & Murphy 2001). Decisions within the how-
dimension of police training are less the result of professional trainer education than an
(uncontrolled) effect of socialization (Körner & Staller 2019b). However, observational data
from police training in the United Kingdom (Cushion 2018) and Germany (Staller & Körner
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2019) indicate a developmental potential with regard to the how-dimension of police training
and thus for the professionalization of the career path for police trainers (Wood & Tong 2009).
The widely cited Constraints-led Approach (CLA), successfully applied in sports science and
sports offers an innovative pedagogical approach that should be introduced into the law
enforcement domain. CLA offers a stimulating framework for training practice as well as
content decisions within the educational curriculum of police trainers, since CLA pursues the
goal narrowing the gap between the training and application context through the ‘integration
between theory, science and knowledge from high-quality, applied practice’ (Renshaw et al.
2019, p.2). In the following, the guiding assumptions and key principles of the CLA are
presented, followed by a brief review of empirical findings as well as a discussion of its possible
application on police training.
Constraints-Led Approach
Defined as a 'principled approach to skills learning in all sports and in all educational fields'
(Renshaw & Chow 2019, p. 104), the CLA developed in the mid-1990s is open to easy transfer
into the police training framework, which can essentially be characterized as a teaching and
learning setting. For police trainers who want to use the CLA effectively in designing
educational processes, an understanding of its guiding assumptions and key principles is
helpful.
Key principles
The argumentative premise of the CLA is formulated by the name: human behavior is
constraints-led, i.e. conditioned by the interplay of individual and environmental factors,
which act as constraints. For example, during an identity check in the context of mass disorder,
the individual approached by the police will likely be emotionally outraged. The intervening
police officer expresses his or her understanding and promises that the check will be
completed quickly while maintaining eye contact.
In the perception of the individual, constraints serve as behaviorally relevant information that,
depending on their nature and condition, restrict certain behavioral options and open up
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others (Torrents et al. 2020). In our example: The person to be controlled expresses his
incomprehension in a loud voice and approaches the intervening police officer while placing
one hand on his back. The officer due to his or her awareness keeps distance by moving slightly
backwards, asking the person to stop and guiding the hand to his or her means of force.
Through the deliberate manipulation of constraints within a simulation of a mass disorder in
police training, a different behavior can be realized. Based on our example: The trainer places
numerous conspicuous persons and allows them to react differently to the police officers
request for control: cooperation is just as possible here as a sudden knife attack. Depending
on the chosen behavior of the simulator, the behavioral requirement and solutions presented
by the officers must also change. In this type of exercise, the competent use of behavioral
degrees of freedom leading to a functional variability in problem solving can emerge through
the deliberate manipulation of constraints.
The core idea of CLA is to enable learners to execute and learn functional solutions for
problems at hand by the deliberate manipulation of constraints (Renshaw et al. 2019). The
concept of constraints is taken from Karl Newell (1986), and distinguished in three types: (1)
Organismic constraints refer to individual prerequisites of the learner. On the one hand,
organismic constraints are of a structural nature, such as body size, weight, i.e. relatively
constant and less variable. On the other hand, they include situational initial states such as
the motivations, intentions or emotional state, i.e. factors that can change from moment to
moment in humans. Also divided into variable and constant factors is (2) the area of
environmental constraints. These include changing ambient conditions such as temperature,
the spatial situation, the nature of the ground, the presence of people and objects or light
conditions as well as the earth's gravity as a (relatively) constant factor. (3) Task constraints
refer to the specific factual and operational structure of the task to be performed centrally,
which is reflected in service regulations and guidelines, e.g. for identity checks. In other
operational domains, e.g. those of special forces, the goal-directed and functional behavior is
constrained differently by corresponding task specifications.
Individual constraints form the decisive frame of reference for the use of information from
task- and environment-related constraints (Orth et al. 2017). Environmental conditions or
requirements of the task must be perceived concretely by the individual and answered by his
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or her action capabilities, otherwise they do not form constraints. If, for example, the police
officer performing the controlling part is not situationally aware of the subject’s slight hand
movement, immediate danger can be posed. The relevance of environmental constraints, on
the other hand, is relative to the task at hand: Tailwind is not an important factor for defending
a knife attack, while light conditions are. The conditions are different in other contexts, such
as the long jump event in track and field, where tailwind influences one’s performance and
even minimal changes in air resistance and gravity have a potential influence, as Araújo and
Davids (2018) argue, using the example of Bob Beamon's world record jump at the 1968
Summer Olympics in Mexico City due to the "thinner" air and reduced gravitational force
caused by the altitude.
In the view of CLA, human behavior appears as an emergent coupling of individual
components of the neuro-biological system, resulting from the dynamic interaction of task-,
individual- and environment-related constraints (Chow et al. 2011). According to the key
concepts of ecological dynamics (Seifert & Davids 2016), CLA supposes a mutuality of
individual and environment, meaning that individuals perceive the environment and create
the environment at the same time (Gibson 1979). Within that process, individual, task and
environmental constraints do not prescribe solutions but deliver individuals affordances
(opportunities for action) and allow them to attune to information, which specify and guide
their behavior (Renshaw et al., 2010; Renshaw & Chow, 2019). The peculiarity of constraints
in view of ecological dynamics lies in the fact that they constitute both limitations and
possibilities of behavior at the same time (Torrents et al. 2020).
Following assumptions of nonlinear pedagogy, cause and effect in biological (individual) and
social systems (teams) are characterized by non-proportionality of variables (Renshaw &
Chow 2019). A particular cause can lead to different effects. For instance, within social conflict
dynamics involving police, the non-linearity of cause and effect is expressed in the fact that a
knife attack can be carried out in very different ways and can lead to different functional
defense solutions. Consistency in the result does not require consistency in the course of
action (Barris et al. 2014). The CLA refers to the principle of biological degeneracy (Edelman &
Gally 2001). Degeneracy describes how functionally equivalent actions and action goals can
be achieved through the coordination of structurally different components of the movement
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system (Edelman & Gally 2001). In this way, the CLA rejects the functionality of an individual-
and situation-independent ideal technique, which still enjoys pride of place in contemporary
police training. In CLA, ideal techniques are replaced by the principle of action variability
within a) different performers, b) one and the same performer and c) different contexts of
performance (Orth et al. 2017; Passos et al. 2013; Barris et al. 2014).
The concept of constraints emphasizes the role of the individual (who-dimension) and thus
the need for individualization within the training process as well as the consideration of
requirements from the application environment (what-dimension). Applied to police training,
the major implication is to support skill acquisition and transfer in training by including
precisely those constraints that are characteristic of performance in the field.
Empirical evidence
The CLA has a well-developed theoretical foundation (Orth et al. 2019; Pinder & Renshaw
2019; Renshaw & Chow 2019) and sound conceptual proposals for implementation (Atencio
et al. 2013). In the field of sports there are numerous studies that have specifically investigated
the effect of targeted manipulations of individual constraints on the motor behavior of
learners (for an overview: Buszard et al. 2016). Even though most of these findings concern
sport, they illustrate (a) the procedure of CLA-based interventions. Training in sport aims at a
more representative connection between training and competition context, insofar facing
comparable challenges than police training, which aims at equipping police officers with skills
needed for deployment.
For example, in the context of sports, Arias and colleagues showed in various studies with the
same cohort of 9-11 year-old children in basketball that a reduction in ball weight resulted in
an increase in passes and dribbling (Arias, Argudo & Alonso, 2012a), in throwing attempts and
successes (Arias, Argudo & Alonso, 2012b) and in one-to-one situations in the game (Arias,
Argudo & Alonso, 2012c). In a similar vein, Timmerman and colleagues (2014) manipulated
key constraints in children tennis by lowering the net edge, which resulted in a more
aggressive game play.
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In sporting contexts related to physical conflict management, Hristovski and colleagues were
able to demonstrate in boxing that the perception of changing distances to the target
(environmental constraint) causes abrupt alternations in the coordination of motor
components and led to new movement patterns (Hristovski et al. 2006) while the
manipulation of the frequency of incoming jabs (task constraint) leads to new, adaptive
defense movements (Hristovski et al. 2009).
The great importance of representative learning designs, which not only allows learners to
deal with the motor requirements of the application environment during training, but also to
experience behaviorally influencing cognitions and affects, has been demonstrated by
Maloney and colleagues (Maloney et al. 2018) in a recent study on Taekwondo fighting. The
fighting behavior and experience of ten Australian national fighters in full-contact Taekwondo
was examined under two conditions: Firstly, in a typical training fight and secondly, in a
friendly competition against international opponents with the participation of the audience
and professional judges (environmental constraints). In both settings, victory was the goal. As
a result, the athletes practicing normal training fight showed significantly less in-fight
emotions (fear, excitement, etc.), lower physiological activation (heart rate) and attacked less
and from a greater distance than under real competition conditions (Maloney et al. 2018). The
study concludes that for complex performances in taekwondo competition, the characteristic
affective and cognitive demands in addition to perceptual-motor demands must be met in
training. Finally, the results of the study indicate that perception, emotion, cognition and
movement are mutually generated under the influence of constraints (Maloney et al. 2018).
From a pedagogical perspective, this results in a global demand for more integration of
representative constraints in practice as opposed to the isolation of individual training
elements.
Findings of a recent study by Körner, Staller and Kecke (Körner et al. 2020) comparing the knife
defense performance of two groups of German police recruits, one been taught in a traditional
linear approach and the other according to key concepts of the CLA, indicates that the
nonlinear training group has a sustainably higher problem-solving competence for the type of
attack with the highest degree of realism, the knife attack carried out surprisingly and with a
high degree of aggressiveness and dynamism. The CLA group got hit less, solved the knife
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attack faster and more often than the participants in the linear group (Körner et al. 2020). As
the first study comparing the impact of a CLA based pedagogical approach and a linear
teaching approach on learning and performance in knife defense, its findings provide valuable
empirical orientations for evidence-based planning of and reflection of police training
(Mitchell and Lewis, 2017).
The available research on CLA-based interventions clearly indicates the potential of this
approach for police training. Thorough principle-based manipulation of constraints, the CLA
enables the representativeness of police training to be increased, thereby promoting targeted
skills development in line with the requirements of the field. Even in the course of the global
COVID-19 pandemic, the CLA offers solutions on how self-defense training within the civilian
and police domain can be continued in a representative manner under conditions of social
distancing (Körner & Staller 2020a). Moreover, a recent empirical study on learning and
motivational effects in teaching mathematics in school suggests that the CLA can be applied
beneficially in other educational fields beyond sports and motor learning as well (Karsch
2020). Concerning conflict management in policing, the available research is limited,
simultaneously providing the potential for expansion and targeted studies. Although more
work is needed, the data currently available suggest that the CLA can be seen as a useful
element within the pedagogical toolkit of professional police trainers. So how might it be
applied here?
Design of police training according to CLA
In CLA, application environment and police training are linked to each other through the
construct of representativeness (Pinder 2012; Renden et al. 2017). Police training is
representative if the characteristics and requirements of the application environment of
police deployment are made available to the learners as action-specific information
(functionality) in a way that allows them to act in training as they have to in the field (action
fidelity) (Staller et al. 2017). For example, a knife defense drill in which the attack is known by
the officer, provides only limited action fidelity. In real knife attacks the type of approach, the
moment of attack as well as the line of attack are seldom known in advance.
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As known from studies, physical attacks in police operations often occur suddenly and
unexpectedly, accompanied by a high degree of aggressiveness, brutality and situational
dynamics (Jager, Klatt, Bliesener, et al. 2013; Körner & Staller 2019; Renden et al. 2017). For
police officers who are likely to deal with violence on a regular basis, special demands result
from the social dynamics of violence. What is required is a high level of situational awareness,
rapid decision-making, avoidance and de-escalation and, if necessary, the rapid, hard and
powerful use of means of force (Staller 2020) with simultaneous regulation of the individual's
feelings of fear and stress and accompanying physiological phenomena (Jensen & Wrisberg
2014). The actions thus performed in training should be similar to those required in
deployment, i.e. they should be carried out under the condition of pressure and physiological
arousal that are usual there. Representativeness allows for action fidelity, which is key for the
transfer of skills from training to the field (Figure 2).
Figure 2: Organismic, task and environmental constraints allowing for appropriate responses to operational
demands
Within the law enforcement community, scenario training has established itself as a method
(di Nota & Huhta 2019; Preddy et al. 2019; Renden et al. 2015) of narrowing the gap between
training and professional practice. However, scenario training usually still follows a linear
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teaching approach and takes the final phase of the training - after the previous treatment of
basics. In contrast, in CLA-based police training, the representative scenario is the normal case
throughout. By manipulating leading constraints, the learning environment is always
representative of the application environment in a lower or higher complexity. The training is
guided by the desire to produce the most high-quality interaction per unit of time (Staller &
Körner 2019), i.e. to enable functional solutions for representative tasks as often as possible
in one session.
Nevertheless, representative learning environments do not reflect the field in terms of a
point-to-point relationship (Staller et al. 2017). Instead, the implementation of distinct
variables is done as if at a mixing desk (Körner & Staller 2017). For instance, the moment of
surprise can be constrained in training by allowing the person in control (the simulator) to take
on the role of the attacker at any time during a simulated identity check, and to attack the
controlling police officer alone or with spontaneously determined allies, while freely choosing
the type of attack. In this type of simulation in training police officers are asked to make their
own decisions. They have a) to recognize and decide what the problem is and b) how the
problem at hand can be resolved. In contrary, within the knife defense drill in which the attack
is known by the officer, only the how-decision needs to be made (how the known attack in
the known line can be defended best).
A more complex decision-making process becomes constrained if the training design allows
for encounters that may involve normal interpersonal interactions in addition to the possibility
of attack, such as cooperative behavior. Furthermore, if the spatial design of the learning
environment includes areas, angles and corners that are not directly visible (e.g. to be realized
by curtains hanging from the ceiling), the situational awareness of police officers is
constrained (Staller et al. 2020), since environmental properties influence the perception of
the acting officers, may increase their stress level and thus change the frame of reference for
processing task-specific information (Table 1).
Table 1: Examples of how police officer’s situati onal awareness during a simulation of a public mass disorder
can be encouraged by manipulating constraints (table adopted from Williams & Hodges 2005)
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Constraints on
behavior
What can be manipulated?
Examples
Emergent behavior
Task
Police mission;
Demands of interaction
Design of a broad range of
simulator scripts: Dealing
with cooperative, worried,
confused, aggressive citizens
up to multiples and knife
attackers
Police officers display
a high degree of
situational awareness
allowing for
appropriate
responses
to the situation at
hand
Individual
Physical, emotional,
cognitive preconditions
High-intensive exercises
before and during simulation;
Altering cognitive tasks
during simulation
Environment
Access to sensory
information;
Properties of space, light,
volume
Creating angles, corners;
Shade light
In the implementation of CLA, the police trainer takes the role of a designer (Körner & Staller
2017). The task is to design training environments through deliberate manipulation of task,
environmental and individual constraints in a way that allows the learner to attune to relevant
behavioral information and to explore and perform variable, adaptive and functional solutions
for the problem at hand (Araújo et al. 2006). To this end, the training involves in a structured
or messy (Pinder & Renshaw 2019) sequence and combination the characteristics and
requirements of the application environment, in order to foster police officers’ skills for the
functional problem solving.
The manipulation of constraints requires the police trainer to do two things: First, to identify
the key variables of the operational environment. Second, the identification of individual
prerequisites, which allow and limit the processing and use of task- and environment-specific
information in individual cases. Of particular importance here are ‘rate limiters’ (Correia et al.
2019), i.e. those characteristics of the individual officer that temporarily stand in the way of
certain functional solutions. For example, a coordination and strength deficit in the legs limits
the functional application of kicking techniques in a self-defense situation. The same applies
to situational awareness or rapid decision-making. Depending on the learner's individual level
15
of development, different task solutions are made possible in the first place (see e.g. (Boulton
& Cole 2016), for the developmental differences in specialized firearms officers).
Individualization as a deliberate design of constraints in training further requires knowledge
about which sources of information a learner prefers to refer to or not when accomplishing
tasks. Finally, the identification of control parameters plays an important role within a CLA-
based police training strategy: Control parameters are constraints which, when manipulated,
lead to a change in the individual's behavior (Orth et al. 2019). E.g. the moment of surprise
within a knife attack can be seen as control parameter, since it provokes the exploration of
new coordination patterns when performing a defending task (Körner et al. 2020).
Conclusion
The development of operational skills among police officers in training requires above all
pedagogical expertise on the part of their instructor. The paper has argued that the CLA
approach, hitherto unknown in the police context, offers a useful tool for training design. The
core idea of the CLA is to enable the exploration and learning of functional solutions in given
performance contexts by deliberate manipulation of constraints, corresponding to the
expectation of professional police training. Training here is by definition expected to be
training for the job (Koedijk et al. 2019).
Despite its importance, few empirical studies have concerned themselves with issues of police
training, whilst at the same time more recent literature clearly indicate increasing demands
for the work of police trainers, e.g. by pointing to the relevance of adopting current findings
on complex movement skills (Nota & Huhta 2019) or social interaction skills (Wolfe et al.
2020). Also, the current international public debate on police violence indirectly refers to
police education and raises critical questions regarding the training of law enforcement
officers (Helander & McNeill Brown 2020).
CLA can support police trainers in coordinating appropriate decisions in the who-, how- and
what-dimensions by placing these variables in a meaningful overall context. Through the
deliberate manipulation of constraints, representatively designed learning environments are
rich in information which allow police officers to generate and explore functional solutions for
16
the problem at hand. To what extent the application of the CLA in police training may result
in similar positive effects that have already been seen in sports remains to be investigated in
future. However, our initial empirical findings indicate that applying CLA in police training
meets the need of equipping police officers with functional skills for the field (Körner et al.
2020). From the perspective of modern training pedagogy, coaching should be understood as
an evidence-based (Mitchell & Lewis 2017) and reflective practice. For this, the CLA offers a
promising approach allowing police trainers to make theoretically and empirically informed
decisions supporting the further professionalization of police training.
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1
Since a consensual internationally definition and term for training settings within the police domain dealing
with citizen contacts, especially (but not only) in conflict situations, operational situations and acts of
aggression against police officers, is lacking, in the following article the term police training is used. The
objective of police training is to develop and to optimize the competence of police officers to act professionally
in such situational settings.
