Connecting theory and practice in police education: police educators’ planning and facilitation for coherence and relevance

Police education is often seen as a typical professional education with a high amount of social responsibility. At the same time, there is an increasing demand for the professionalization of police education with more focus on the theoretical and academic courses. This development challenges the practical relevance of police education and the connection between theory and professional practice. In this paper, we ask Norwegian police educators how they perceive the connection between theory and professional practice in their courses, and how they plan and facilitate learning activities that contribute to create a meaningful relationship between theory and practice. We conduct document analysis on the national curriculum and interviews with educators from different background and courses. We expect there might be differences between the courses that appears to be more heterogeneous or fragmented and those that appears more integrated. We aim finding some concrete recommendations to increase the perceived connection between theory and practice among students.