Signature Problems of Police Preparation: Elaborating the Representation-Decomposition-Approximation Framework

• In Event: Achieving Professional Identity: Beyond Knowledge and Skill

Abstract

Based on a study of a police academy in a large urban area, this paper argues that in order to more fully conceptualize professional preparation, researchers might elaborate Grossman and colleagues' 2009 representation-decomposition-approximation framework for analyzing professional preparation to account for how preparation attends to tacit knowledge and what opportunities are created for candidates to acquire it. This study looks at a signature pedagogy of police preparation - scenario training - to examine the signature problems of police work that are represented, decomposed and approximated in police preparation. The data show that both tacit and explicit forms of knowledge are required to contend with these problems.

Author

• Jessica Charles, Berkeley University of California