The Impact of Preparation: Conditions for Developing Professional Knowledge through Simulations

This article examines simulations of critical incidents in police education by investigating how activities in the preparation phase influence participants' actions and thus the conditions for learning professional knowledge. The study is based on interviews in two stages (traditional and stimulated recall interviews) with six selected students and video analysis of one student police patrol's short-term preparation. The results showed that simulation and associated activities informed the students of their responsibilities and pre-determined tasks without effectively helping them to cope with the situation. The analysis suggests that an understanding of the social and interactional requirements for producing the kind of situation that the students were to be trained for and learn from were not mediated. Thus our conclusion is that good conditions for learning in and through simulations require a simulation competence among the participants and that it is a responsibility of the instructors to consider how this competence is to be developed.