Police Training in Practice: Organization and Delivery According to European Law Enforcement Agencies 2 37 say maybe like this and then they’ll try again and again. Not like provide [information on] this is the way that you’re always going to open a door, and this is the way you will always work an attack. If you do that, they are just going to copy me. And they might have good ideas too. So, I like to give them a chance to try. And if I see that it’s not good, I try to give them hints and then they find it out by themselves.” (I10) Feedback With 17 quotations relating to feedback, instructors described that providing effective feedback is one of the most important tasks of the instructor during a training session. Giving feedback allows instructors to review their trainees’ performance, provide suggestions for improvement, and gather input from the trainees, while also ensuring that what is being learned by the trainees aligns with the purpose of the training session. Although most interviewed instructors mentioned that they utilize training time for giving feedback, the way they provide it differs from agency to agency. Some law enforcement agencies use unstructured feedback in which the role of the instructor is to debate the trainees performance and look for better solutions together, while other agencies prefer a more structured approach. For instance, one law enforcement agency has specific content that the instructors cover during a scenario-based training session: “We have a specific way of giving feedback and we are working on four points: And that’s safety, communication, movement, and treating the problem. And I think if you talk about those four aspects, you cover 90 percent of what you need to cover in a really small timeframe.” (TC2) Although the content of the feedback might be the same for instructors of the same law enforcement agency, the delivery of feedback oftentimes differs from instructor to instructor even within an agency. For instance, when using verbal feedback, four of the interviewed instructors explicitly mentioned that they prefer to have their trainees reflect on their performance themselves before the instructor provides input and recommendations. Four other instructors also noted the use of physical feedback as immensely important for their trainees to learn. For those instructors, physical feedback refers to feedback that trainees get from the training environment. To highlight this, one instructor (I2) provided the example of receiving a pain stimulus such as getting hit with non-lethal training ammunition when a trainee is not taking cover properly during a training scenario. While the content, delivery, and type of feedback are important for instructors to consider, instructors have also mentioned that the timing of feedback is relevant in a training session.
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