Spiralling up professionalism: An integrated model for higher education

Globally the higher education community continues to explore curriculum delivery models which connect theory to practice to support the transfer of learning from the classroom to operational practice. Police recruit education is no exception and utilises a myriad of curriculum design and delivery models. Since 1998 the New South Wales Police Force in Australia has worked in partnership with Charles Sturt University on a degree based recruit education program. Continuous improvement and evaluation of the program has resulted in the implementation of an innovative curriculum design and delivery approach which challenges the traditional university subject learning process. This paper discusses the innovative model which is built on (1) the concept of situated learning and (2) the constructive alignment approach to teaching and learning. The learning delivery design is supported by a unique distributed content technology environment. The model and the initial results of its evaluation are presented. The initial findings suggest an increase in the level of preparedness of the student recruit for operational practice. The approach offers a contribution to higher education course development in which a central tenet is establishing a seamless segue from student to professional.