What can be improved in police training? And what role can scenario-based training play in this? What is scenario based training and what not? Do you need to practice skills before scenario training and is scenario training something you do at the end of a training day? What demands does scenario based training place on first responder trainers and what do they have to do and learn? Is ’teaching games for understanding’ the same as constraind led approach and what does this mean for scenario based training? For all first responder trainers, there is much to learn from this conversation with Chris Cushion, Professor of Coaching & Pedagogy at Loughborough University, Loughborough, United Kingdom.
So for all listeners from the police and military and imery medicine once again trying to bridge the gap between uh science and practice for trainers today talking with Chris kushin do I spell it correctly like this perfect perfect and he’s a professor and now comes the uh
Press part he’s a professor in coaching and pedagogy perfect perfect okay so this is Al also interesting for my colleagues in uh physical education because we talk a lot about pedagogy and uh although we just spoke that in in Holland it has a different feeling it’s more about
Upbringing and not so much on the curriculum however uh uh Chris has uh has written beautiful inspiring articles and I just read one title to to uh to make you little inspirated and this is changing police personal safety trading so changing police personal safety trading that should trigger you already
Trainers and then the second part using scenario based trading so we we have to change police training and we use scenario Based training I think that that that’s already that’s a great great topics and then for listeners I want to uh uh pre preload you with some other
Questions I would like to talk about and then we just start with it that is what is scenario Based training because in the military in Holland and in police and in emergency medicine there is a lot of talk about scenario Based training what it is and what it is not do we need
Techniques first what is the difference between performance and learning the problems with perfect technique well and the challenges with to change police training you have a beautiful framework for it so I hope everybody is now already on the front seats and and let’s just start with with that article Chris
Because and you also talked with Brian Willis about it in his excellent uh podcast so changing police personal safety training let’s like Brian did Ju Just Define some terms personal safety training yeah I think it’s defensive tactics so in in England and Wales the police uh aren’t armed so it’s all empty
Hand so it would be arrest and self-defense techniques including use of PPE so it include the use of baton spray and handcuffing so yeah Bic empty hand self-defense and arrest control and restraint or whatever terminology so yeah but includes PPE includes baton and spray yeah so not taser and not um
Firearms and a little sideway are there in the UK and Wales when does the firearms come into play is that for special units yeah that’s a yeah that’s a special um so you you have to be you’re an authorized Firearms officer and each police force will have a dedicated Firearms unit so regular
Officers would apply to join that unit and then they’re deployed on calls where they’re required so it’s not it’s a there it’s a as I say it’s a specialist unit within police forces and officers apply to join that unit and get trained trained up as far offices okay
Great well the it’s it’s such I try to uh underscore some uh some things but I underscore the whole article so it make didn’t make any sense in because it’s so dense in good information but let’s start let’s just start maybe a good uh good start is why changing police
Personal safety trading in the first place what did you find so I mean I I my I I’m have a sporting sport coaching background and I’m very much a coaching person um so I’m interested in in a coaching approach to teaching and learning and instruction and and a hobby
And I’m a martial arts coach in my parttime in my spare time and in about 2015 so it’s seven or eight years ago um I noticed that there were what I what I call contact professionals you might call them First Responders we’re starting to come for training so police
Officers people working security people working in health care when they’re dealing with um problematic patients or service users U mental health environments those sorts of things so those those folks were starting to come to the club to do training so I just casually asked you know why you know why you know
Why are you here why are you doing this and pretty much all of them said the training that we get with our job isn’t doesn’t work for us it’s not fit for purpose you know we don’t we don’t the stuff is not relevant what we learn um
And it just it’s just I we don’t feel confident with what we’re being taught so the academic in me said oh that this is really interesting so why don’t we why don’t we explore this a little bit more so I’m an ethnographer by trade so that means I immerse myself in cultures
So I observe and immerse myself an ended period in cultures so I signed up for courses um I signed up for different training courses so I looked at courses that were training people for secure mental health environment security hospital security um different different contact professionals where they had to deal
With violence and aggression and this included the police so I managed to speak to a a police force and basically said it be can I can I do the training essentially um this island and I also went to the US and I did some training
In the US the empty hand or the arrest and self-defense and um the police one was particularly interesting so um looking at how the course was delivered the structure of the course so I police officers typically have between a five and 10 basic training um program and
Then once a year they have two a two-day refresher course so I took part in three or four of the two-day Refreshers so as a participant so I did it as a learner um and that article is available I think it came out in 2016 or 2017 if people
Want to read read that in more detail but I I wrote up the findings of that of that study if you will and just looked at the data and the data told me that despite the huge time pressure on trainers about half the time was spent standing around listening to War Stories
Talking talking about problems not actually practicing anything so half the half the time wasn’t being spent doing practice and the practices were very it was a very linear type of thing so it’s essentially a list of techniques um often disaggregated so broken into smaller parts but also um
Decontextualized so there was you know so handcuffing on the floor was literally lay on the floor and put your hand in the air and we’ll put and we’ll handcuff you so know how did this person get on the floor how have they landed what’s you know nothing like that so it
It was all very decontextualized it was all learn one skill repeat it until the instructors were happy or not and then move on to the next thing and at the very end of the two days you might then have a situation so they might go have a
Domestic situation or a fight in the street or something where they did a scenario and it was it was more of an assessment than a learning experience so the the learning was very linear um decontextualized um skill practices with scenarios really at the end um you to
Test and the instructors were very much standing with clipboards and just not inputting on the scenario so they’d watch it so it’ be at full speed 100 you know 100 miles an hour um no input from the instructors and it was kind of yet this looks fine so asking the learners
Are asking the officers to make a lot of the connections themselves so I’ve got to take this decontextualized skill and somehow figure out when to use it how to use it when is it appropriate and those sorts of things so and as as we know from how people learn that probably
Isn’t a great structure now coincidentally at that time again these are all happy coincidences so the the professional body for policing in England and Wales is called the College of policing um they about 10 years ago they um delegated officer safety tra it used to be centralized and about a decade or so
Ago they delegated it out to individual forces to be responsible for their own training um the quality you know there there were internally there were issues with the training uh and they then wanted to bring it back under a national kind of guidance so the professional body basically wanted to take back
Control of offic safety and they want it to be evidence informed I were looking for evidence and basically my work there were two papers you know one written in the ’90s and mine were basically the only research about officer safety training so they asked me if I would
Help them and get involved and basically that’s how it started so about 2016 he started talking and then starting to think about formulating a different way to do officer safety training so that’s kind of yeah that’s the history of the paper so to speak that’s where it’s
That’s where that where where it all comes from really and some of the issues that we’ you know that we found around how how how practice was organized the amount of time officers were spending practicing what they were doing and what the issues were on retention and transfer IE learning I essentially the
Practice design and the practice organization were not creating the conditions for learning yeah in a and and and and before we go to uh then then in in the paper you you go to uh scenario based trading as as a tool and then we talk about how but you you mentioned two
Things I’m curious about and not as a big topic but that that is uh the standard curriculum is is is this a thing is it a good thing or not um okay yeah so there is a the again in England Wales there’s an officer safety training
Manual and it’s it’s it’s like it’s Mass it’s massive but what you’ll find is that there’ll be a list of probably five or six techniques for everything everything and that that in and of itself becomes a pretty much standardized so it’s a skills driven curriculum it’s basically a list of
Skills five or six things that they that the trainers work through during the course of the training so there is a very much a standardized curriculum um that skills first is is is there a is there a pro is there a is there a i because of my
English I have not the right words but is there something good in well let’s a little bit history in Holland uh there was a time when I was involved in developing a national curriculum for police training it it was not skill-based it was principle based but
When we went along we had also the feeling if we make that reader that syllabus that curriculum then in lawsuits everywhere police uses vience it becomes like a yeah there you go copy copy thing yeah yeah we have the same issue here so a
Lot of the so techniques I mean I I was with a force recently supporting them transitioning to more scenario Based training and they literally had a manual with photographs in it yeah so they photograph of different techniques and the instructors basically had to make sure their Learners looked like the
Photograph yeah and it was very standardized and and they couldn’t deviate away from this and the and it was very it’s there’s a you know the law policy and the law are not the same things right yeah so law law laws on reasonable on self-defense and reasonable Force are sometimes times disconnected
From policy and folks there there’s a misunderstanding that as long as I’ve taught the technique correctly somehow I won’t be prosecuted well that’s not so there’s there’s a disconnect there between what’s lawful what the law says and what the policy says and there is a I think for sure a you know that
It’s almost like a safety blanket so if we if we’ve taught this so everyone this technique that looks like that we’ll be fine when we go to court every time if there’s a use of force instant yet we’ve taught the correct technique they did the correct technique so we’re
We’re fine but that’s not really how how the law Works around reasonable force and use of force so there is some slippage between policy and law essentially it can and it can also make make officers less flexible because I’ve also seen uh a good scenario Based training but then it became so scripted
That only one kind of behavior is approved and then you have scenario Based training but still uh yes I mean I mean it’s really interesting you know being in a martial arts world you know if you if you if you spar with people or if you go if you fight in
Competitions you know people have had 10 12 15 years experience um will have go will have a go goto moves right they’ll have three or four things that they really Ed the most that they that they’re always looking for and yet we give police officers who we train for minimal amount
Of hours like 30 things and expect them to do it and it’s like well it doesn’t really work like that so what was I mean what was interesting is when I went to the US the US is a completely different model so it’s a it’s a market so any
Police force Sheriff’s Office Sheriff’s Department police department can buy in whatever training they like so they have a budget and they just buy stuff in so there’s no there’s no real control it’s a free market and I and what was interesting is that I went with a particular training company who was
Training officers from different Sheriff’s offices and police department so there was a range of officers on that course and their curriculum was one side of A4 yeah but it it was principal based but it also gave you two things there’s one thing and then if that doesn’t work here’s another thing
It was a side of a it was one side of A4 and you spent a lot of time practicing those things but in different situations yeah so the decision you know so part of scenario Based training is you progress skill and decision- making together so you never never separate the two exactly
So this really helps because you’re just practicing these techniques in different situations over and over again and because there’s so few of them you know I spent it was a five-day course and I got really good at do really good at doing those things because there wasn’t things to learn
Right yes exactly and then and then before we go into the scenario Based training and and and the paper another thing is uh here in Holland I have a good friend of mine Dr yah Timber and he he does some research about really the effectiveness and the and the usability of the
Training in the practice and vendy dostein also a police officer is doing a PhD with exactly the same because we can teach a lot but if we don’t know if there are no outcome studies if there are if you don’t know what police officers use how is that in
The UK is is there any okay so yeah so part part of the part of the change process that the College of policing is they they they collect data on use of force incidents and they collect data on what officers use and they they’ve because that initial survey or that
Initial data is a little they’re redoing it so they’re looking at basically what what are the what are the use of force incidents and um what what happened essentially and they and they’re trying to colate information and data so they’re they’re definitely looking at outcomes yeah and
Part of the pilot work that we did here so the college again put on a you know the results should be coming out soon actually so they’re looking at other metrics so basically overall use of force injuries to subject injuries to officers complaints so they’re looking at a range of different metrics
Comparing people who’ve gone through the scenario Based training versus people who haven’t I’ve not seen the data but the data I think is very very supportive of the change in training but and that but that’s going to be around in the so it’s going to be coming out soon so be able
To share that and looking at how the how some of these uh metrics have been affected by training yeah because you definitely need to measure your effect the effect training right yeah of course yeah yeah then then it then it become a can it become a cycle a loop to inform each other
Right yeah okay okay I okay what’s interesting is um go yeah no no no go what I mean I mean it’s interesting so that that that particular Force who were really really bound to the manual to the techniques when you went and watched the officer’s training they were doing
Things in the training room certain take downs and it’s like is that in the manual it’s like no okay so the you know the officers were improvising and doing stuff but like okay that’s I’m not sure I would do you know so so the techniques
Were fine but then it’s like KY is that is that the best way to deal with that situation and then you ask them is that in the manual and they generally say no we don’t teach that and it’s like right but they’re doing it so you again you
Have this people people do what they they need to do and particularly if you put them under a little bit of pressure right so you know they have they’ll they’ll have you know goal directed Behavior they’ll try and achieve their goal by doing something yeah probably
Won’t be from the manual no I have the same experience as the martial artist I I grew up in karate right for for example and then after 15 years I started to do boxing and kickboxing but uh when push came to show I always went
Back to a kind of karate stand and and now I’m doing grappling a lot and now if if the pressure is high I just grapple so it’s you can teach me anything but what you did so long is sober in your body yeah well I think that’s a really
Interesting point we talk about and in the paper and and in both papers really we talk about the this difference between performance and learning and learning is attention and transfer right yeah so if you retain something and transfer it so you take it from the
Chaining room and apply it in a in a situation you’ve actually learned it so and people talk about I default back to this or I default back to that well actually you default back to the thing you’ve actually learned yeah and the thing you didn’t learn you don’t use
That’s the point yeah is it when you know so retention and transfer is what learning is whether that’s knowledge understanding or skills yes can I is the thing is there a relatively permanent change and is it retained and transferred so the thing you default back to is actually the thing that you
Actually learned yes and the thing that goes out the window really is evidenced that you didn’t learn it in the first place right yeah yeah yeah and and and the big question of course then is how to uh how to um uh take care of the retention and uh and the transfer but
But maybe that’s a good that’s a good step to to uh uh sh iio Based training because if I understand it correctly so there was something something wrong with wrong the training could be could become better and then um then you start to talk about um uh scenario Based training
Can can you just because there are so many great topics in in in the in only in this paragraph already but I will try to sit on my hands what is scenario Based training and what is it not and uh we have on on the second half because we do two
Halves like a soccer game we have uh we have eight minutes left just to start with scenario by training what is it and what not so scenario scenario Based training for me authentic scenario Based training is an entire pedagogical approach so it’s something in which you place all of your training and
Essentially it’s reproducing I talk about if we go from a the in a police situation we go from a radio call and we cut cut the radio call and we go for the resolution of whatever the incident is whether that’s handcuffing or whatever it is and we cut
Both ends and we pick that up and we put that in the training room that is the scenario but all of the training happens inside of that so we don’t preload any skills we don’t preload any knowledge we don’t do anything so a scenario is it becomes con cep and problem based and
Not skill Le and it becomes the vehicle through which we learn so it’s basically radio call to resolution here’s the situation now the beauty of the scen beauty of the training room is we can slow things down we can speed things up we can have another go we can add
Information in we can reduce complexity we so we can start playing with all of these things so basically radio cor to resolution it’s some form of modified version of the whole because it probably won’t be as representative as you’d like but it still looks and feels like policing and then you just basically
Work through the scenario over and over and over again adding increasing complexity challenging the Learner in different ways depending on what you want to teach now the main difference and I SP I’ve spoken earlier really about this is that you’re trying to progress skill um so every repetition
Has an element of decision making in it yeah right so every rep you the officer has to make a decision I to make multiple decisions so they have to read the environment read the cues read the subject so they have to make decisions on what they need to do so the decision
Making flows through every repetition and then every repetition in has an appropriate skill that needs to be done whether that’s some whether that’s from an assault so I’ve got strategies and tactics from assault whether it’s controlling a subject whether that’s restraining a subject depending on how the scenario unfolds so every rep every
Repetition has decision- making and every repetition has skill and the skill and decision making are connected so I know at this point I need to put my hands on this person I know at this point I need to not get knocked out I know at this point I need to put some
Kind of mechanical restraint on them because it’s worked through and I’ve just ended up at this space now what what we can do of course because it’s the training room if there are elements of skill that we want to add in if if officers are struggling with a
Particular technique or skill or they’re struggling with a decision making we can modify the scenario to emphasize that so we can put conditions in that say you have to do this or you have to do that or you know you can start just manipulating the environment so essentially the scenario becomes becomes
The complete thing for everything we want to learn now if there if we want to talk about the law if we want to talk about a theoretical subject you know it might be crisis management or verbal deescalation or elements of law we can just pause at this point and say okay
Let’s is that lawful what’s the legal situation here and if if the students or the Learners are struggling and say well let’s stop there let’s go and talk about the law a little bit over here and then we can come back and now we know whether thing so basically you insert Knowledge
And Skills when it becomes needed and that’s important and an important part of learning is the learner understanding so not only are they understanding the thing they’re trying to learn they’re also understanding the importance of the thing they’re trying to learn so why do
I need to know this at this point why do I need to so that understanding piece is really important and they and it’s embodied so they experience it physically so they might be challenged on the on you know they might have to deal with someone in crisis they might
Have to verbally whatever it is yeah they realize that they need a skill or they realize that they need a piece of knowledge and that understanding makes their operant attention so they’re attending to something and it makes them very receptive to receiving the information rather than trying to recall
A PowerPoint presentation they had three hours ago yeah trying to make sense of it because it’s all happening in the moment and because it’s all connected together it their their understanding and operant attention is really high so basically skill decision making an progress together scenario Based
Training is a is the whole thing is the vehicle that carries all of that training so there’s no front loading of skill there’s no front loading of knowledge everything is inserted when it’s needed Within the scenario so and it it reminds me a lot and maybe in the second half we can can
Can talk a little bit about it about other models in physical education like teaching gangster understanding but also nowadays the constraint Le approach from ecological psychology action perception coupling yeah so I I would I would say that it’s it’s definitely so I have a sporting background so this is grounded
In tgfu it’s grounded teaching games for understanding um um less so less constraints Le approach so it it has a pedagogical Focus rather than an ecological Dynamics Focus I would say from my perspective that’s not to say that you couldn’t use CLA or ecological Dynamics but my perspective
Is more more of a pedagogical what what is I’m not sure if we can tackle this this in three minutes but what what for what is for you the difference between seeing it from a sha perspective or yeah well yeah I’m not sure we can tackle it that’s a whole
Another whole essentially there’s method and epistemology so there’s how to do something and there’s the theoretical explanation for it so I and I’ve talked about this before in terms of constructing the learn environment con uh adding conditions constraining whatever you want to do it so it’s
Different words for the same thing so I think methodologically these approaches are very similar where they diverge is the kind of the epistemological space so the theoretical explanation as to why it works and how it works so I’m for various reasons I’m not not always satisfied with ecological Dynamics as a
Theoretical explanation and the evidence space that underpin it underpins it I’m more comfortable with the pedagogical or the learning space and the evidence that underpins that so that’s so but I you know from my perspective it’s about what practitioners do yeah and we can have an interesting academic discussion on why
And the theory that underpins it but but in many ways what you do is very similar in terms of the constructing of the learning environment the explanation about why it works and the evidence that support it is that’s kind of there’s a dotted line and that’s when you kind of
Separate into that kind of learning theory pedagogical Space versus an ecological Dynamics or CA space so that’s for me that’s kind of a separate discussion yes it is yeah but it’s intriguing also yeah fascinating space but you know you know you for a trainer yeah yeah working with instructors I
Want them to be good at doing stuff yes and at some point or other we can talk about why it works or how it works right they need to be good at the doing stuff and that’s kind of where I try to that’s kind of where I try to sit really about
The application and the principles of application just uh just change the world by our distinction between teams and games and constraint lead yes but now we move on we already talked about What scenario trading scenario based trading is but I think we did not mention what it is not and how
It still can be um brought into under the traditional trading paradigma okay so what I what I see is very often um people still so what is is not it’s not frontloading skills so there’s no there’s not a block of skills decontextualized skills training then
Put into a scenario at the end so it’s not a it’s not something to test learning it’s not something that you use for assessment so very often I might see a block of decontextualized skills training and then some form of scenario at the end it isn’t something where you just do one
Attempt and then stop so that’s not scenario Based training this is is about multiple you know multiple repetitions of the same task now what what that means is that you could again because this is a you know because in the training room you’re in control of it
You might you know still from Radio call to resolution so you can use the fast forward button you can move move people to different parts of the scenario but it still plays through and the idea is that you get repetition without it almost So you you’re doing reps of the
Same scenario so again very often we I see people run a scenario once maybe for three or 4 minutes and then spend 10 minutes debriefing it and then change the scenario so it’s like well that’s that’s really not you’re using scenarios but that’s not scenario Based training soen authentic scenario Based training
Is the vehicle in which all of the training sits it’s not something that you use to help the Learners understand or assess it’s basically the basis for for the training and within the scenario training there is feedback I think yes yeah of course so again you know that’s
Um so the the so we talk about coaching in the scenario and coaching through the scenario so there’s two different ways of looking at this so or training through or in so if you if you set up a scenario that has um so I need to go up
To somebody I need to say some words I need to do a thing and I need to end and I do that over and over again the learner will be learning through the scenario so if I start so if I start with you so I’m going to go up walk up
To Eric Eric’s going to be reason compliant maybe verbally resistant uh and then I’m going to handcuff you and search you right and then either release you or let arrest you or let you go that’s the scenario but I can start in this through the scenario I can say well
Actually I want you to be really I want you to be abusive now not just verbally resistant now I want you to be just phys just awkward physically and I can start adding layers without adding any instruction or feedback or anything and the Learners are are in you know
Coaching in the scenar OR through the scenario so the scenario is presenting problems they’re figuring out the solution they’re working out what’s happening and really as the instructor or the coach I don’t have to do very much what that enables me to do is step back and say officer one manages this
Really well but isn’t so good at this so when he goes through that scenario I may challenge him in different ways whereas officer 2 is amazing at all of this so I’m going to make this harder for her so they’re still doing the same scenario but now I’m starting to make the
Learning more individualized because the scenario I don’t have to do anything with the scenario I can step back and start analyzing and coaching in the scenario would be okay this person’s really struggling now I’m going to step in and I’m going to give them some feedback I might
Demonstrate I might model I might ask them a question so we’ve got coaching through the scenario where the conditions you apply challenge the Learner in different ways so that just it just carries a lot of the water and then we’ve got coaching in the scenario where I said okay this Eric’s really
Struggling here he’s not figuring this out okay just stop there you know what what is what you’re having an issue with right have you thought about this can I show you something so they now we’re starting to work with individual officers depending on where they issues
So the old model was very much a one- siiz fits-all and you had varying skill levels whereas this scenario Based training because the scenario is carrying so much of the water as a trainer I can step back and start tweaking the conditions but also supporting individual officers as they
As they’re working through the scenario and giving the the coaching and support that they need so that so people get feedback from doing the task so there’s an intrinsic feedback loop but also there’s an extrinsic feedback loop from the instructor very often and again you know the Habit in England certainly was
You know if somebody does a good job everyone has to stop and do a debrief and it’s like no we want people to practice you know a proxy for learning is practice you need to keep doing this over and over again and you can just say
Good job well done that’s a really nice that’s really good verbal skills there or you did that you know you cuff really efficiently there well done keep it up so you can give feedback but don’t interrupt the practice you don’t have to stop and do a ma a massive debrief so
Again we’ve got some skills of the we’ve got the skills of the trainer here haven’t we to be able to set up the scenario so it ticks over and gives them the learning that they want then stepping back and doing a bit of analysis and tweak it okay this is too
Easy I need to make this harder or this is too difficult I need to make it a little bit easier so tweak the scenario to make it uh meet the needs of the learner and then also look at individual offices and say okay this person’s really strong here but struggling with
This this person’s really good at everything so I’m going to make it their life more difficult this person’s really struggling with everything so I’m going to make their life a little bit easier so you can really start to personalize the learning through coaching through and in the
Scenario so it means a lot of diff differentiating I don’t don’t know if that correct word different differentiation yeah oh yeah it’s differentiating yes that’s exactly what you’re doing you’re you’re meeting the needs of the learner so it’s not a one you know so again in my experience with
The research there was huge variability in skill level between officer I mean huge variability and the and the officers who were struggling really didn’t get much help so they they were they they they struggled all the way through the training and probably at the end of the two days were better than
When they arrived because they’ basically been struggling to do with certain things you know they’re right at the level of kind of that you’re just about good enough to do this but you’re struggling with it so the scenario based approach would a expose that so we’d see them struggling
You know they wouldn’t be able to hide so very often again in that in a different type of training environment officers can sometimes hide their weaknesses or hide the issues that they’ve got because that’s you know for whatever reason so we you can expose that but also then
We can you can intervene you can give them support and help and say I see you’re already struggling with this let’s you know there again that if it’s a skill thing let’s pause this let’s take you out of this let’s work on that particular skill for you to give you
More confidence and make you feel more competent at doing this thing and then we’ll put you back in the scenario and you can go again so again it’s how we use that skill you know the skill training piece is very much about addressing the needs of the
Learner and fixing you know it’s a problem based concept based thing fixing the problem rather than you must learn this yeah and do we have any advice for uh for I I will call it class management because in my own experience as a as a
Police instructor um yeah if I had a a scenario and there were 12 officers I was very busy with even with arranging of for example if we are in a building and and doing all those kind of stuff so yeah if I had to attend to all if I have
To keep them all active and give them all their own level of resistance and feedback do we have any advice yeah well welcome to training that’s what training should feel like so if Oh I thought it easy job yeah if you’re a trainer and it doesn’t feel
Like that you’re probably not doing the job properly so it should feel exactly how you described but it’s how you organize things isn’t there so you’re you’re so we talk about risk so R risk to subject risk to officer that needs more of your attention and needs more of your
Oversight than stuff that’s lower risk so if if we’re talking about verbal deescalation verbal resistance like really low level get off me get off me really low level physical and the you know that doesn’t need a huge amount you know I can keep my eye on it but I don’t
Need to be on it where whereas stuff that’s higher risk and is more kinetic I absolutely need to control it but of course how we do that is we manage the speed and the intensity of it so we can do high risk but low intensity so we could have
An edged weapon attack but we do it at the speed of two so we control the speed yeah so I can stab you at the speed of two or three so again what what a common mistake is we the instructors don’t control the speed of the scenario particularly in the high
Risk stuff so you can start at slower speed and then again say okay well let’s move that to a four let’s move it to a five in the training room you probably know go never go higher than six you know you might have gear you might have
Suits or whatever but for me you know speed of six is good enough speed of six you know gets all of the responses you’re looking for physically you know that fight flight response the hormonal responses at speed of six work and you can get it at lower lower intensity so
We’ve seen officers you know even at one and two they have a a you know they have a physical response to the assault to the attack even at that lower speed so people that’s not realistic but the visual cues are still there the decision- making is still there it’s
Just at a slower speed and suddenly now I can do high risk but low intensity and you know I’m not you know the danger of injury or the danger of problem starts to control so we can think about risk across the training room so not everyone is necessarily doing the same activity
So we might you know the activity might be connected so that there’s a there’s some interleaving going on so the different activities are all connected Within in the scenario or people are doing lower levels of the scenario but the lower risk stuff really doesn’t need a as much attention as the higher risk
Stuff and the higher risk stuff I can mitigate by controlling the speed and the intensity of it so we’re talking and we call it layering so we’re looking to layer the experience and and and we and we’re looking to you know slowly increase pressure on the officers so we
Don’t start at full speed so we can have physical pressure cognitive pressure pressure and emotional pressure so I can do very something very slowly but I could be scream you know blood vessels scream you know have a huge emotional intensity but do it at a very slow
Physical speed so it’s you still get the response you know it still works so again the skill of the trainer is thinking about all of those things but I’m setting up my practice design sets it up to enable me to be able to coach to the
Best of my ability what I what you don’t want to do is be running around managing you know the whole purpose is this is you can get sucked into just managing everything but you need to you need to get the organization set up by looking at the task looking at the intensities
Looking at cont where you need to be attentive and where you can be less attentive and then it creates that opportunities and space for you to to to coach basically to be an instructor and do you have any preference for a certain kind of feedback because there are many
Many ways to give feedback you can yeah just give them feedback you can reinforce behaviors or you can you can ask questions do we have any prefence yeah so what so again we’re trying to put the learning in the hands of the learner so all of that all of that is
Available so we can use all of those things are available sometimes people just need to be told sometimes you know if you know if you want to reinforce a particular Behavior you can do it that way but this this approach really is about giving the O you know the
Ownership of the learning to the learner so the the the officers think about their own issues and own problems and we we’re helping them to figure those things out because on a on a wet Wednesday night at 10 you know dark cold wet I’m not going to be there with the
Answers they need to work that out so part of this is you know we we talk a little bit about adaptive expertise part of this is about being reflective thinking about problem solving so we try and shape the feedback in that structure so we have a what when why so what’s
Happening when’s it happening why is it happening and then what’s the solution so we then get the try to get that kind of process that reflective process and again if if the officer is struggling if the learner is struggling we might need to demonstrate give them some feedback
That is ver you know um corrective feedback whatever it is yeah but again it’s driven by what who what and who’s standing in front of me if someone’s figuring it out for themselves I’m going to let them carry on I’m not going to impose myself on the learner until they
Need it if going I don’t really you know you can see it I I don’t really know what’s happening I don’t okay well watch this how about this why don’t I show you something so you can bring all these other behaviors to Bear but it aligns
With the needs of the learner so all of that stuff Eric is on the table I think you can offer feedback in lots of different ways but my preference would be to go down a questioning route first and see where the learner’s at yeah before I suddenly decide for them that
I’m just going to tell them or I’m going to reinforce or whatever it is those other things are available but I need to check where they’re at with it so we have that what what’s happening where’s it happening when’s it happening why is it happening how are we going to fix it
What do we need to do and once we get there very often they’ll yeah fine or let me show you a different way or have you thought about that so that those other behaviors then become available to it but there’s not a I’m always starting with the learner first and then working
Out rather than starting with me it’s not about me it’s about them I’m not starting with me as the trainer let me tell you everything I know about this well so what you know who cares you know there are some really skillful and knowledgeable trainers who just want to
Tell everybody what they know but the Learners don’t necessarily need that what they need is you to fix the problem they’re having for them right now and that might be just asking them some questions and let helping them figure it out for themselves and what does this mean for trainer education
Because you get a kind of different role and and different and yeah what what is required of course you you written a whole paper about it and it’s your you have a lot of thought but um in my experience as a trainer and teacher uh to do that job correctly
Requires you know a game game knowledge so to speak and you have to and but but but um so there’s a lot of things it requires from police Trainers for training education maybe you can talk about a little bit but especially two things about the role of reflection yeah
As a trainer in your in becoming a better training so what is what is reflection self-reflection and okay yeah maybe that’s a good starting point fine no I totally get this I think in my in my experience over the last eight years there’s basically three Loops here we’re
In a three Loop scenario the first Loop is recognizing that the training that you’re that that know everyone’s doing their best and and we and you don’t want to be critical so you train you know you you base your training on what was the best information at the time and Things
Become habits and we kind of move into a particular Char Paradigm which in police training particularly tends to be skills first and you know that kind of thing so first that the first Loop Isn that that might not be optimal for learning right so that’s the first Loop
That’s the first challenge the Second Challenge is under recognizing that random and variable practice or scenario Based training is a solution and and understanding what it is and what it isn’t that’s the second Loop and the third Loop is getting good at doing scenario Based training so there’s three
Loops yeah and I come across trainers in you know who who at the beginning of the loot are in the middle are still so there’s you know so I guess the first thing is understanding where you are you know do I accept can I look at my training go you know
What this might not be optimal for learning it might not be the best way to do things so that’s the F you know that’s the first big thing um the second thing is then understanding all I can about What scenario training is and isn’t and the third thing is getting
Good at doing it so we we need to take again with with the pilot work in England you know we do we did a five day upskill course with existing trainers and the first two days it took two days to go through the first Loop
Yeah it took two days of like this isn’t going to work and what we’re doing is fine and you know why are we not frontloading skills and they people can’t do this without learning this now all of this stuff and we do it by just running we run the
Training as you know it’s scenario Based training so and we insert the content so we we model the scenarios we deliver it we get them to start doing parts of it and just work work them through so by you know by day four and five we’re in
The third loop I we’re trying to make you better at delivering scenario Based training so I think there’s um there’s definitely um there’s definitely some Loops to go through to get to this place so the training needs to address those Loops yeah you need to CH you know
Challenge in a you know in a safe and supportive way we need to challenge trainers training methods and talk about how people learn and how how does what you’re doing align to that so we need to kind of be transformative in that space we then need to okay okay let’s be clear
About what it is and what it isn’t and now let’s practice having a go at delivering it let’s support you let’s coach you or make you better so we’ll model it for you we’ll give you some demonstration so it’s a very you know so you know and we’re currently working on
The new trainer course which will be longer but it’s going to be the same principle it’ll be the same principle but it’s all wrapped up in you know modeling the scenario delivering the scenario thinking about how you’re working thinking about your behavior thinking about practice design all of
These things so there’s some content pieces there but also the order that you need to go through them now the the reflection piece is you know you know what what are you what are you doing and why are you doing it really so you know let’s look
At the training that you’re doing and let’s ask questions about why why you’re doing what are the outcomes you’re expecting to get from this what problems are you encountering so I think you know that’s a skill I think you need to encourage people to do it and they need
To practice doing it so the the the reflective piece is so so important for trainers and you know we just say I’ll just reflect on this without really giving people structure so the questions what where when why how you know that might be a structure but also you know really understanding what what’s
Happening with my Learners how am I influencing that so you know what am I doing and why am I doing it really are those really important questions to start thinking about looking at the training rather than just delivering it and walking away at the end going yeah I’ve done a great job with
This yeah and you also mentioned and this is maybe a little bit nerdy but you mentioned in one of your articles that I think in the Fuko article I think yeah but even even uh even becoming a trainer in that Paradigm for as as a facilitator as a coach
Um you’re not you’re you’re not neutral no no you’re always you’re always in the in in in in the kind of yeah yeah you’re always carrying the imprint of your experiences and what you know what you need to do you know and we can never get away from that you know nobody’s ever
Going to be neutral and that’s fine but what we need to do is be upfront with from where we where we’re coming from yeah right so again working you know that working with police officers I’m we I’m upfront about where I’m coming from now these are my assumptions about
Learning this is my this is where I’m coming from and this is the lens that I’m looking through yeah so you know I put it’s up front and center so I’m not it’s not implicit you know and again just that exercise really is really useful getting people to talk about
Their you know why you know it’s what what do you understand about how people learn what do you understand about how you’re practicing just talk to me about that yeah and it’s it bring it makes this stuff explicit rather than you know it’s very implicit isn’t it at
The moment we don’t really talk about that we don’t talk about so when you know for me one of the interesting observations is police trainers in my experience talk about the what so it’s all about techniques and skills the what to what you know what about this hold or
That’s you know that or you know so we can talk forever about the curricular the what but the conversations about well how do we teach this just don’t happen so for me it’s just dragging you you know I don’t really care you know scenario Based training is is is is
Technique neutral so some you know you need to hold this person how you hold them I don’t care yeah I just don’t care it’s like how but how do we teach the person to do this hold that’s what I’m interested in not what you do so we’ve tried to be deliberately agnostic or
Neutral on technique and not really comment on technique and say you know right so we we worked through a scenario where at this point you need to put hands on this person what you know what what now are you going to do so the conversation is always about how we
Learn this yeah not what the thing we learn whereas the in my experience trainer the trainer conversation is the other way around yeah it’s always about well how do I put this hold on and what about this armar and what about this and know it’s more about what and less about
How so for me it’s flipping that around I I don’t care what I’m really interested in how you’re setting up the can we even go a little bit further by asking the question why are you doing this yeah because yeah yeah of course I mean the why question is can be quite
Challenging to people yeah no so you have to you know you wouldn’t necessarily blurt it out straight away but uh you know that that can be quite um that you know the why question is we need to get to that question so that’s why I always end up
With what when where and then why yeah I don’t start with why you know what are you doing where are you doing it when when and now we get to why okay well that’s the thing I mean what what I will say about scenario Based training
Is it’s a really useful tool you know so my focus is on the how how to teach how to Coach P space but what scenario Based training does do is it does start to expose the what a little bit Yeah because you’re doing the whole thing right so if we’re handcuffing on the
Floor Something’s Happened we need some someone needs to get on the floor I need to get control of them on the floor and then I need so now there’s a whole there’s a whole chain of things that have happened before I put the handcuffs on now sometimes what you found find is
That there’s no logic to that chain in police training so and there are gaps so I’ve got something for this and I’ve got something for that but I’ve got nothing I’ve not got a skill or technique that gets me from here to there so what’s interesting as well is it kind of start
People start going all right yeah how are we going to go from yeah this to this because we’ve got a technique for this and we’ve got a technique for this but we’ve not got anything that Bridges the Gap so scenario Based training is a is helpful in that space because because
You have to literally follow you you know you follow the fight you follow the activity all the way through from the start to the finish and suddenly people go oh we’ve got a hole here what what would a police officer do to get from here to there yeah you know there’s
Nothing in there so it it does start to ask questions about the curriculum for sure so and and then uh because of the time I have you you you have a beautiful frame work in the article changing police personal safety training that that’s a framework for for the Dilemma
Framework but uh because of the time I think I would also love to hear your thoughts about adaptive expertise okay but but I’m not sure if you say that the framework is more important for this conversation then it’s also fine with me well I think I think the important thing
To realiz well I’m straight away going to dive into the framework here I think I mean the framework talks about the the individual trainer the conceptual you know my knowledge and understanding about learning so my knowledge based the concepts that I need and learn and it
Broadens out all the way to to W The Wider social context in which things take place and for me the framework is important in that change if you if you so I can work with individual officers so if you gave me 20 officers um and we did some scenario
Based training I’m pretty sure I could make them better at what they do if I go into a context or environment that doesn’t support that behavior that change my work has been for nothing and if there’s a if the the you know if there’s not the political will to change
You know there’s not investment or there’s not support then that you you know that it’s it’s really difficult to change so the framework is more about wider cultural chain so we start with the individual their uh conceptual understanding and their pedagogical practice they we then move into the
Context in which they work you know their colleagues and the surrounding environment and then it’s the broader political landscape of policing now for for in England all of those things have aligned really so there’s a broader political will to change training for all sorts of reasons you know given the
You know where we are with policing right now there’s a recognition within forces that the stats aren’t great we we’ve got all these problems there’s a recognition and even even within individual trainers themselves you know they they recognize that there are some issues but I’m can’t always figure out
What those issues are so all of those things in England have aligned to enable this change to happen now if I’d have if we’d have gone with scenario Based training and not been able to align those things I don’t think it would have been you know I don’t think it would
Have had the impact that it has you know so there’s policy there’s you know there’s governmental policy there’s W the wi policing culture there’s a local context and there’s individual trainers are all aligning to this change and that’s been really powerful in making that happen so I I just think the
Framework is important the framework tells us that if you don’t nail you know if you don’t get these all of these things lined up it’s going to make change incredibly difficult incredibly difficult and is this framework uh is is this a framework we can use in um in police
Trainer education yes not only on the government level so we can talk with trainers and future trainers about this this four yeah so I mean you know in other teaching that I do what we’re trying to do is so there’s always a cultural element to to coaching whether
It’s in sport different sports whether it’s in the military whe there’s always a cultural element you need to be you know as a practitioner you need to be able to re you know you need to be able to manage up you need to be able to fit
In you need to be a you know so we we you know I you our postgraduate courses I use this as a framework to help people when you land in an environment figure out what that you know it’s not just about you and your job you need to fit
Into that space that space fits into a broader culture and there’s some other you know there’s other agendas so you need to be aware of that stuff you need to get your head up and say okay so all of that stuff you know other authors are talking about that social press there’s
A press on how you can behave and how you can practice so you need to be able to read the landscape so for me I think it’s a a valuable tool to to enable individuals to to to be aware of and read the landscape and then adjust accordingly right then you can adjust
Accordingly and enable you to kind of fit in and basically it’s about playing the game a little bit if you understand the game you can play it a lot better than if you don’t and this is a tool that helps you understand how that you know whether it’s around funding whether
It’s around politics whether it’s around um particular cultures practice cultures whether it’s about knowledge and understanding you just get a sense of you know it’s it’s a tool that you can use just to help you read the environment understand the environment that you’re in and then
Adjust accordingly to it so I think for me it’s been a very a very valuable tool and it’s something that we give to our students to help them um you know be be able to adapt to new environments or you know when they get a job or being able
To fit in and be really effective practitioners from the get-go do you have uh is is there course material available uh in your papers or for trainers trainer education so yeah at the moment you need to come to ler and do the course so I’ve not published
Any of the material so the stuff that I use to teach this is not available in a public a published form but that’s a really good suggestion maybe I need to maybe I need to write it up and uh and get it out there so people can use it in
A more pra iCal space so but again you know if I’m going if I’m going into any environment and I’m looking at so people ask me to come and look at there look at coaching or training that’s the framework that I use I start at the
Level of the individual and then we work up and we say and try and understand what’s happening in this space so it isn’t just about upskilling individual trainers that’s important but that on its own isn’t going to be enough to CH to change practice and arguably maybe
That’s why you know it’s so difficult to make change so a lot of this stuff seems so obvious and seems so common sense to do why aren’t we doing it well there’s a whole lot of there’s some all other levels here yeah you you need to manage
Upwards you need to get Buy in from management you need to get political buy in for why you’re doing it so you know there’s a whole load of levels as to why how you can enact change and change cultures so for me it’s a use full you
Know diagnostic tool I think I use it to really understand environments I’m in and I we teach it give it to our students so when they land in a new space they can figure out really quickly What You Know What’s Happening Here who’s who’s important what’s important
And how do I fit into that yeah it’s it’s it’s great I think in teacher education yes it’s it’s great so Chris we’ve talked about a lot and um I would love to Deep dive in an Adaptive coaching expertise and so on but then then I think we have to talk another
Time yeah maybe that’s another talk we talk about because I think it’s important and I yes yeah do we have any CL close sorry yeah yeah I mean what I would say is that scenario Based training as we’ve discussed today aligns really nicely with that you know adaptive expertise it’s you know the
Training is integrated it for practical it foregrounds thinking decision- making reflection it’s concept based so all of those things connect really nicely with developing adaptive expertise rather than procedural expertise so procedural expertise is really good at following a list adaptive expertise is more about that problem solving piece you know and
In my experience police officers are solving problems constantly they presented with problems constantly and they need to be able to apply their knowledge and understanding to fix problems and that’s you know that’s why that’s know the skills then are what you apply to fix problems so it really
Shifts you know the two things really align quite nicely I think I had recently had a conversation with Christian itol he is a former sniper from from Norway and he’s now doing its PhD on uh implementing mental skills training into the sniper course and he talked a lot about uh yeah he talks
About professional expertise I think but he means the same not they they have to learn learn to learn yes right yeah yeah so there’s that meta cognition that meta learn thing so you have to understand yourself and understand how you do that think and think about your thinking yeah
Um but you can you know you can set up different environments to encourage that or not so if your environment is very procedural and very linear you’re not going to be developing that type of thinking and that type of expertise so again so for me this is very non know
The training is very nonlinear it’s not procedural at all you know there are elements of procedure but we need to know we need to move beyond that we need to solve problems and and apply our knowledge to solve the you know yeah solve the issues that are in front of us that aren’t
Always obvious and straightforward it was a title of one of Mario st’s first articles I read from Germany right developing problem solvers in here a lot of uh do you have any closing thoughts for for trainers so maybe a good advice for for literature A book a course or
Just whatever inspires them yeah that I mean there’s a there’s it’s not out yet so there’s a there’s a book coming out in the Autumn around pedagogies for um police training so they deal with scenario Based training it’s not I haven’t written it it’s a edited
Collection um but there you know in the references to the article you’ve got there some really nice descriptors of scenario Based training in in military and police context so feel free to do that but as a trainer it’s for me give it a go really think about how
Your training can look and feel more like policing you know again we I asked that question you know when I’m working with trainers does that what that learner doing look and feel like policing and if the answer is no what can you do to change it to make it look
And feel more like policing and just that very simple question they say well I can add this or I can get them to do this first perfect now that’s a really easy step to start transitioning you know you know for some it’s a big step but sometimes you can you can just
Transition just by asking that question how can I make this practice look and feel more like policing basically great great question yeah I think that that’s a very practical uh thing to do well Chris thank you so much for your time and I’m sure uh we learned a lot from it
And um well hope to read a lot of articles from you again pleasure to you yeah thanks thanks for for your time pleas