Chapter 2 42 agencies. By maintaining an overview of the most pressing national or regional matters, administrative police boards can use the yearly training focus to shape their training content to be realistic, current, and relevant. Another strength that the interviewed law enforcement agencies share is their ability to critically evaluate the efficacy of the current state of their training practices. To this end, training coordinators and instructors aim to identify shortcomings of their current practices and look to improve the state of training of their agencies. For instance, when recognizing that teaching police officers the perfect technique in a static setting did not ensure transfer to the complex and dynamic settings that officers encounter on the street (Pinder et al., 2015; Staller et al., 2022), the instructors began looking to adjust their approach to skill learning. Current changes that the interviewed law enforcement agencies aim to implement into their training include moving away from isolated technique mastery of a single skill (Abraham & Collins, 2011), implementing decision-based training (Helsen & Starkes, 1999; Johnsen et al., 2016), and changing pedagogical approaches from strictly linear to nonlinear (see Koerner & Staller, 2018, 2021), combating the common principles that are still reflected in training curricula and delivery. The ability of training instructors, coordinators, and law enforcement agencies to be self-critical and identify areas of improvements in training facilitates the development of current practices. Current police training and its delivery benefit from the diverse expertise of police instructors. Instructors’ perception of how learning takes place differs both across and within law enforcement agencies — similar to how one trainee’s learning preference differs from the next (Abraham & Collins, 2011). Because of their diverse perspectives on learning, each police instructor takes a unique approach to the delivery of their training. When law enforcement agencies provide their instructors with autonomy in the delivery of training, instructors have the opportunity to use their expertise and develop an approach that fits them best, rather than adhering to a prescribed teaching style that does not align with their expertise and preference. Giving police instructors the autonomy to use their expertise to guide a training session increases the chance that instructors are fully engaged in their practice and create motivating training environments for trainees (Klusmann et al., 2008; Christenson et al., 2012). This autonomy and space for diversity may indeed also be reflected in the high levels of enjoyment and motivation of instructors found in this study. Challenges of Current Training Practices The overview of current training practices across European law enforcement agencies reveals numerous shared challenges that police coordinators and instructors face in the organization
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