Police educators’ experiences of teaching: Detailing differences between teacher- and learner-centred approaches

This paper outlines selected results from a PhD study of the teaching experiences of police educators in Australian police academies. The purpose of this paper is to describe the variation in police educators’ teaching experiences, with these results being used to identify effective teaching practice and discuss its impact on student learning. A qualitative research specialisation called phenomenography was used for the data collection and analysis process. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with 25 police educators from across five police academies. The interviews were analysed using comparative analysis to constitute a limited number of qualitatively different categories representing variation from less to more complete experiences. Discussion of the results highlighted ideal approaches to teaching and how these experiences compare to more traditional police academy teaching practices. The implications of these results were discussed in terms of improving learning in police academies.