Research project Police officers and doctors are typical contact professions that require the ability to act professionally in challenging and difficult situations. In professional education programmes that lead to roles where one works with people in complex situations and often difficult encounters, courses or course components in “professional development” are common elements.
The project aims to generate knowledge about how the conditions for learning professional conduct are created within police and medical education. Furthermore, there is an interest in studying the assessment process of professional conduct. This project will contribute knowledge to the overarching question of how professional competencies can be learned and assessed in professional education.
In higher education, professional and skills-oriented elements are present in many different programmes and are designated in various ways. Police and medical education are, among other things, governed by qualification targets concerning professional attitude, self-awareness, empathetic ability, evaluative capacity, critical judgement, and reflexive ability. Traditional forms of assessment primarily focus on knowledge and understanding, making these objectives difficult to examine, and the core subject matter in professional elements is rarely clearly specified.
In all professions where interpersonal meetings are central, situationally adapted actions and a professional approach, often with a focus on conduct, are required. Working as a police officer or doctor means being exposed to many situations with high emotional stress, where the demand for a professional attitude and conduct is crucial. Both are practices that involve forms of knowledge that are difficult to articulate in speech and writing, and therefore also challenging to communicate and develop. This means that educators in educational contexts find themselves in situations that can become complex, both in terms of choice of methods and content, as well as when assessing students’ knowledge and skills. Previous studies by Lindberg and Rantatalo (2015) show that police officers and doctors are two professional categories that display several distinguishing characteristics, but also a number of similarities. Comparing two professional educations that, by their nature, have both similarities and differences, and delving into their practices, can create opportunities for change within these programmes, but may also be of interest to other professional education programmes. Previous research in other professional education programmes highlights ambiguities in both the core subject matter and implementation. That is, it is not certain that there is consensus on what should be included in professional development components within police and medical education, or how these should be organised. The aim of the thesis project is to contribute knowledge about how the conditions for learning professional conduct are created within police and medical education, as well as how students’ knowledge and skills are assessed.
Supervisor: Oscar Rantatalo
Assistant Supervisor: Isabelle Stjerna Doohan
