Academy staff and other police trainers have little evidence about what strategies work best when training recruits and in-service officers, including the most effective instructional techniques that help law enforcement officers retain knowledge and skills acquired during training.¹ The Academy Innovations Research Project evaluated the concept of “integration,” a content delivery strategy that combines content of disciplines typically taught separately, to determine if it helped police recruits learn and retain information better than a traditional siloed lecture approach.²

The Study

The project used in-person and online instruction to compare learning and retention of core communication skills content delivered via traditional siloed lectures versus an integrated delivery. The following five U.S. police agencies participated in this research project:

1. Baltimore (Maryland) Police Academy
2. Collin College (Texas) Basic Police Academy
3. Nevada Peace Officer Standards and Training (POST) Academy
4. New Mexico Law Enforcement Academy
5. Ulster County (New York) Police Basic Training Program

Participants were divided into four groups; (1) in-person and (2) online traditional groups that received one lecture-based communication skills lesson, simulating a siloed instructional experience, and (3) in-person and (4) online integrated groups that received an integrated communication skills curriculum.

The main curriculum consisted of an initial communication skills lesson and two additional lessons, Persons in Crisis and Motor Vehicle Stops. The Persons in Crisis and Motor Vehicle Stops lessons reinforced content that focused on applying communication and de-escalation skills in these specific contexts. All participants completed a pre-test, written tests following each integrated supplemental instruction (regardless of whether they received supplemental instruction), and a post-test to evaluate how well they learned and retained information over time.

Results

Throughout the experiment’s 90-day period, Groups 3 and 4 (in-person and online integrated) performed markedly better on written tests than groups 1 and 2 (in-person and online traditional).

Median Scores per Test
Table documents the median group performance per test:

Group	Wave 1 (pre-test) percent correct	Wave 2 (post-test) percent correct	Wave 3 (post-test + 30 days) percent correct	Wave 4 (post-test + 60 days) percent correct
In-person traditional	47.2	64.2	60.4	51.5
Online traditional	40.5	53.8	54.1	39.4
In-person integrated	42.7	64.4	72.6	72.9
Online integrated	40.4	53.6	59.8	63.8

Group Performance (Median)
Graph presents group performance over time:

The data above illustrate that participants in group 3 (in-person integrated) and group 4 (online integrated) performed better over time, with group 3 performing best of all groups throughout the experiment. Online integrated group participants also scored higher than traditional lecture groups. Conversely, in-person and online groups that received content via stand-alone, traditional siloed delivery lost significant knowledge over time. The traditional delivery groups performed best on a post-test delivered immediately following the initial delivery of lesson content, with student performance declining as the time between lesson delivery and testing increased.

Application

The results showed that students that received integrated instruction retained knowledge over time, while students that received a traditional lecture and no additional content lost knowledge throughout the trial. The research shows that using an integrated curriculum enhances a recruit’s ability to learn and retain information. Police trainers should consider employing integration strategies to maximize recruit knowledge retention. The project report Improving Learning Outcomes in Police Academy Training, details the results of the study and provides practical integration implementation best practices for use in police instruction.

Conclusion

The Academy Innovations Research Project demonstrated that police recruits who receive an integrated curriculum retain information longer than recruits who receive content in a traditional, siloed manner. With traditional instructional approaches like stand-alone lectures common in police training, the Academy Innovations Project’s findings suggest that current police training methods may not fully maximize learning and knowledge retention. Academy staff and other police trainers should consider integrating critical content to increase the information recruits learn and retain during training.

Additional information and resources, including the practitioners’ guide, research publications, and sample integrated communication skills curriculum, are available on the Academy Innovations Project page.

Dianne Beer-Maxwell
IADLEST

Jon Blum
FORCE Concepts

Timothy Bonadies
Law Enforcement Leadership

Peggy Schaefer
IADLEST

References:

---

1. P. Neyroud, Review of Police Leadership and Training, Gov.uk (2010), https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/police-leadership-and-training-report-review; R. Mugford, S. Corey, and C. Bennell, “Improving Police Training from a Cognitive Load Perspective,” Policing: An International Journal of Police Strategies & Management 32(May 2013): 31–337; E. Stanko and P. Dawson, Police Use of Research Evidence: Recommendations for Improvement (New York: Springer, 2015); L. Huey, “What Do We Know About In-Service Police Training? Results of a Failed Systematic Review,” Sociology Publications 40 (2018).

2. K. Mohr and R. Welker, The Role of Integrated Curriculum in the 21st Century School. D.Ed. dissertation, University of Missouri–St. Louis, 2017, https://irl.umsl.edu/dissertation/688.

Tweet