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Abstract

This paper explores disembodiment and policing in an Australian police jurisdiction – we call ‘Conundrum’. This narrative research on police education uncovers the tensions and disembodied practices of police and the daily dilemmas that police experience working in the new era of professional policing. Police officers’ educational experiences are at odds with contemporary notions and practices of lifelong learning, workplace learning and reflexive practice. This research draws attention to the inherent difficulty that police face today as they learn to ‘manage their emotions’ in response to different forms of risk, uncertainty and instability, underscored by the longstanding ‘habitus’ in the ‘field’ of policing. This emotional work impacts on police identity and is a cost to the ‘self’ as police increasingly disconnect from their work, their colleagues and themselves. We argue that an urgent review of police education and training in Australia is needed to move from the practice-based reproduction of cultural and applied learning traditions to a more holistic education program that focuses on metacognition, reflexive practice and critical cognition.

Keywords

(Dis)embodiment adult learning policing professional practice habitus emotion work

Introduction

The epistemological space of policing is in a state of flux as police organisations and police officers attempt to comprehend and respond to increasing calls for professionalism in police work and training (Australia New Zealand Policing Advisory Agency, n.d.). Alongside this is the changing the nature of police work, with different and more complex crimes, societal changes and increased community expectations of the role of police, and discourses of the increased risk of terrorism (Murray, 2005; Murray, 2006). Further, police and policing are not removed from managerialism and its impact on work, including increased accountability requirements and monitoring of police performance (Bradley, 2009). This is compounded by the contemporary condition of work, where workers are expected to work harder and faster, and to juggle competing complex roles, tasks and interests (Billett, 2009, 2010; Gee, 1998). Donald Schön defines the contemporary work place as a ‘swamp’ or swampy lowlands, where at times there is a disconnection between theory and action in the ‘indeterminate, swampy zones of practice’ (Schön, 1987, p. 3). Police confront ‘radically different forms of risk, uncertainty and instability’ in today’s society and communities (McLaughlin, 2006; McLaughlin and Murji, 1999: 217). Consequently, traditional notions of police identity, purpose, and policing practices are under erasure (Clark, 2005; Fleming and Wakefied, 2009; Lanyon, 2009; Ransley and Mazerolle, 2009; Wakefield, 2009). As Schön (1987: 3) claims ‘in the swampy lowland, messy, confusing problems defy technical solution’. Overlaying this are national and international agendas driving the professionalisation of policing (Fyfe, 2013; Lanyon, 2009; Ransley and Mazerolle, 2009; Stone and Travis, 2013).

Conceptions of policing as a craft or trade still dominate police training with a focus on the ‘microobjectives’ of learning (i.e. content and behaviour), perpetuated by a behaviouristic approach involving imitation and reproduction, with little, if any, need for comprehension (Birzer, 2003; Cox, 2011; McLaren, 2009: 62, emphasis in original; Ryan, 2016). Despite assertions and efforts to professionalise policing, many police continue to portray policing as a craft or trade, best learned on the job (Cox, 2011; Steinheider et al., 2012). Consequently, police education has focused on applied, concrete material approaches, de-emphasising critical cognition and metacognitive practices (Bradley, 2009; Wilmshurst and Ransley, 2007). Such an approach was particularly evident in data from the jurisdiction that we call ‘Conundrum’, which is the focus of this research (Ryan, 2016). Recent literature on adult learning identifies the need to move away from a focus on critical cognition in professional learning to a more embodied approach recognising the whole person in learning, including gut reactions, intuition and embodied hunches (Beckett, 2002). Much of the contemporary literature on adult learning now recognises the complexity of how adults learn, acknowledging that adults need a holistic education program that includes a curriculum and accompanying pedagogy that encourages critical cognition, social and experiential learning and provides opportunities for work based learning or professional experience (Beckett, 2002; Jarvis, 2010). This research has revealed that police training in ‘Conundrum’ continues to emphasise applied learning practices reinforcing traditional policing through apprentice-style mentorship of new police at the cost of critical reflection of theory and practice (Bradley, 2009; Cox, 2011; Ryan, 2016).

In Australia, each police jurisdiction is responsible for the recruitment of its own police officers. From the 1990s, police organisations began to establish partnerships with universities to co-deliver police education and training, with the level of co-delivery varying across jurisdictions (Paterson, 2011; Wimshurst and Ransley, 2007). ‘Conundrum’ has partnered with a local university for co-delivery of some subjects in recruit training (e.g. ethics) and other options for pathways to higher education; however, the organisation is the key driver of this partnership (Ryan, 2016).

Recruit training programs range from 25 weeks duration in Queensland (QPOL, 2014), 33 weeks in Victoria (VicPOL, 2015) and 52 weeks in South Australia (SAPOL, 2013). The recruits are paid employees, and therefore subject to the organisation’s authority, standards and sanctions (Bradley, 2009; Ryan, 2016). Behaviour and progress are constantly surveilled and assessed (Conti and Nolan, 2005; Cox, 2011). Training represents a fundamental means of socialisation and managerial control (Bradley, 2009), and is highly prescriptive, with an emphasis on group learning activities. The individual is fashioned into the ideal employee for a regimented, efficient law enforcement practice and occupation (Bradley, 2009; Cox, 2011; Ryan, 2016). Despite the variation in the length of training across the states, all recruits graduate with comparable powers and are expected to perform as fully-fledged police officers.

The limited and prescriptive scope of the recruit curricula supports the reproduction of practice-based knowledge (Bradley, 2009; Cox, 2011; Ryan, 2016). This correlates with the time devoted to particular aspects of policing. Up to 50% of time is allocated to active or ‘hard’ elements of policing (e.g. defensive tactics, deployment of firearms, the use of vehicles) with the remainder spread across a range of theoretical areas, described as ‘softer’ elements of policing (e.g. communication, vulnerable and at-risk groups, youth justice, domestic violence) (Bradley, 2009: 100–101).

Cox (2011: 4) describes police training and education in Australia as ‘intellectually redundant’, based on ‘behaviouralist orientated competency based training’. Learning in the academy involves the socialisation of recruits to policing as a craft or trade (Bradley, 2009), as opposed to an opportunity for deep learning to equip recruits for the exigencies and uncertainties of today’s police work. Bradley (2009: 101) notes:

The absence of deeper forms of learning based on reading and reflection is not usually a cause for concern for either recruits or trainers. Book based knowledge is not highly valued in police academies where the pressure is on ensuring that recruits acquire a survival kit of necessary legal knowledge and technical skills before their all too soon immersion into police work.

Bradley (2009: 102) argues that the current training and education practices are ‘past their used-by dates’ and major shifts in thinking and practice are needed. His position is bolstered by the Fitzgerald (1989) Royal Commission of Inquiry commenting on the inadequacy of police training, further reinforced by the Wood (1997) and Kennedy (2004) Inquiries. Recommendations included the need for outside educators, enhanced education levels for all police officers and education and training to be delivered in education settings other than police academies. Mahony and Prenzler (1996: 291) claim differences have arisen between police and higher education institutions as to the purpose of police education and training. The motivation for incorporating higher education into police education has been reactive, derived from ‘crises of confidence in police organizations’ and ‘[c]ommissions of inquiry into mismanagement and corruption’ (Wimshurst and Ransley 2007: 106).

In this particular police jurisdiction, the lack of deep learning is in part due to the reproduction of practice-based knowledge imparted by trainers who have no formal qualifications in education or adult education, basing their teaching on their own experience of a didactic pedagogy with a focus on the teacher as ‘expert' (Birzer, 2003; Bradley, 2009; Cox, 2011; McCoy, 2006; Ryan, 2016; White, 2006). Their ability as operational police officers, underscored by a lack of mistakes made in their career, is the true measure of their value as trainers (Cox, 2011; McCoy, 2006; Ryan, 2016; White, 2006). Ironically, despite its powerful role socialising and disciplining recruits, police training and education sit in a liminal space in police organisations with trainers in recruit training coming mainly from the lower ranks of constable and sergeant (Bradley, 2009; Cox, 2011; McCoy, 2006; Ryan, 2016; White, 2006).

In ‘Conundrum’, training and education are subordinate to operational policing, taken for granted, and treated as a process akin to administrative technical matters rather than an opportunity for deep learning (Ryan, 2016). This typifies notions of learning embedded in the assumptions of socialisation where an attitude of conformity and compliance is valued and expected rather than one of critical thinking and questioning (Bradley, 2009; Christie et al., 1996; Conti, 2009; Conti and Doreian, 2014; Conti and Nolan, 2005; Ryan, 2016). The latter is antithetical to hierarchical structures where decision-making rests with a limited number of people, practice is routine and process driven, scholarship and critical reflection devalued, and status quo is ‘actively or passively’ maintained (Cressey et al., 2006: 23).

Methodology

In the tradition of narrative research, we approached the research as a puzzle rather than a problem that needed to be solved (Clandinin, 2016). The purpose of addressing this research puzzle is to identify new possibilities of how policing practice and learning could be otherwise. Education and workplace learning has come to the fore in the last 25 years (Beckett and Hager, 2002; Billet, 2010; Marsick and Watkins, 2015). In the spirit of lifelong learning, we now know that people learn most of their lives and the majority of this takes place in the situated site of the workplace (Beckett and Hager, 2002). Police training, however, has been slow to implement new notions of professional learning and recognising the importance of providing spaces for workplace learning. The enduring focus on applied learning and residual forms of training, at the expense of critical cognitivism, deeper level learning and reflexivity, continues to dominate police education (Bradley, 2009; Cox, 2011; Ryan, 2016).

This empirical research is qualitative, using narrative methodology and multiple theoretical lenses – deconstructive, post-structural and critical – to disrupt police officers’ conceptions of their professional practice (Ryan, 2016). A central reason for adopting qualitative methodology is the nature of policing, which is imbued with modernist ideas of law and order, reflecting scientific, rational thinking, and evidence-based practices (Waters, 2007). A compelling reason for adopting narrative methodology and semi-structured interviews was the deep-seated oral history of police culture.

In this research, we saw theory as a way of thinking otherwise, and drew inspiration from Maclure (2010) in using theory to challenge what is known. Drawing on the work of Jackson and Mazzei (2012: 6, emphasis in original) who assert that ‘theory and data constitute and make one another’ and they ‘use[d] theory to think with data (or data to think with theory)’. This qualitative case study research was conducted for a PhD, ethics approval was given by the Faculty of Arts and Education Low Risk Ethics Committee. A call for research participants and the recruitment of police officers was enabled by the office of Human Resources in ‘Conundrum’. The police jurisdiction has been given the pseudonym of ‘Conundrum’ in order to preserve the confidentiality of the organisation and the research participants. The response to the call for participants was positive with 36 police officers from various ranks (e.g. constables, sergeants, inspectors and senior police officers in the corporate management team) volunteering to participate. Pseudonyms were also assigned to the participants to ensure their confidentiality. The first of the two interviews focused on police officers’ perceptions of and preferences for learning. The second interview involved police officers reflecting on their practice through an exploration of specific workplace experiences – for example, something that worked well, something that was challenging, something that did not work well. Of the 36 police officers, 19 chose to participate in the first interview and 17 chose the second interview. The use of semi-structured interviews aligned with police officers' penchant for telling stories, but it also allowed for the co-creation of multiple meanings from the narratives that were spoken (Clandinin, 2016).

Analysis

Analysis of the data involved three different readings of police officers’ narratives (Stronach and Maclure, 1997). The first reading, a critical discourse analysis focussed on three dimensions of temporality, sociality and place (Clandinin, 2016). The second reading involved the deconstruction of the identified themes with attention given to contradictions, tensions, doubtful matters (aporias) and blind spots (lacunae). The third reading focused on finding shifts and movement in meaning.

Themes that emerged from the first reading included what knowledge was produced, reproduced and how, whose interests were served, internal and external power relations, identity and subjectivity of police officers and their sense of agency and purpose, and gender-power relations were also identified. The second reading involved a deconstruction of the identified themes. Attention was given to contradictions, tensions, doubtful matters (aporias), blind spots (lacunae) and repetition. This subsequent reading enabled categorisation of key concepts linked to power and knowledge, gender, (dis)embodied practice, practice and knowledge. The third reading involved finding shifts and movement in meaning and disrupting meaning, but, importantly, ‘remobilizing’ meaning, thinking beyond what is currently the pedagogy and educative practices in policing to reimagining the potential for what it could be (Stronach and Maclure, 1997). Different theoretical lenses were used to interrogate the data. The three readings of the data and the aforementioned thematic analysis provided the foundation for critical discussion of the findings of police officers’ narratives with critical theory and current literature on police education and training.

Police research and context

Fundamental to the agenda of change is a paucity of research in policing of non-operational practices (Mazeika et al., 2010). Police research tends towards a tradition of ‘normative research’ focused on police procedures, tactics, and strategies (Crank, 2003: 188), producing ‘instrumental knowledge’ that supports ‘technical rationality’ (Schön, 1983: 21; Thacher, 2001: 389). Such a limited scope of research has contributed to the lack of an identified body of knowledge to underpin police practice and has compounded an enduring disregard by police of theory-based knowledge (Steinheider et al., 2012). This was affirmed in the data. Practice-based knowledge, combined with technical rationality and instrumental knowledge, has prevailed and has legitimacy (Green and Gates, 2014). A normative research focus, however, has the potential to overlook the effects of context (i.e. organisation, occupation, individual self-interest), including the social, relational and embodied nature of practice (Crank, 2003: 196; Edwards, 2010). Others argue that a technical rationalist response is no longer adequate (Bradley, 2009; Cox, 2011; Fyfe, 2013; Lanyon, 2009) for the messy, confusing problems of contemporary policing.

Particular elements of police cultures have hegemonic status. These elements are produced and sustained by a culture of oral communication – narrative and ‘war stories’ – that establish particular ‘ways of talking’ and ‘ways of seeing’ that are resistant to challenge and change (Fairclough, 1995: 41). For example, an enduring focus on fighting crime, underscored by notions of risk, action and excitement supporting an attitude and expectation of police as ‘physically, emotionally tough, aggressive and engage[d] in traditionally masculine activities’ (Loftus, 2012; Waddington, 1999: 99). Such an attitude and set of expectations is perpetuated by the ‘attitudes, values and experiences’ of the police officers themselves (Kennedy, 2004: 34).

In the global, differentiated society of the 21st century, people are confronted with a very different set of ‘mutually contradictory, global and personal risks’ (Beck et al., 1994: 7). Police also confront a set of new and different challenges, crimes and demands – domestic terrorism and resultant fear, international peace-keeping, advances in technological crimes, complex domestic social problems – while maintaining their focus on long-standing traditional crimes against property and person, drugs, general public order and safety (Murray, 2005; Murray, 2006).

Contemporary policing therefore ‘is marked by diversification and uncertainty of crime control problems’ (Ransley and Mazerolle, 2009: 365). Becoming less relevant are the traditional, tried and true police responses and strategies based on what was known and what had previously worked because what was previously understood and dealt with as ‘problems of order’ requiring technical rational responses are now understood as ‘problems of risk’, the features of which are ‘complexity’, ‘uncertainty’, and ‘ambiguity’ (Rosa et al., 2014: 131–136). Efforts to increase control in response to problems of risk do not necessarily result in increased control. Instead, the results can be a lack of or loss of control and greater uncertainty. The increased militarisation of police (Balko, 2014) and the expansion of legislation and police powers by state and federal governments in Australia represent efforts to reclaim control and a sense of certainty (Ackland, 2016).

Police habitus

Bourdieu’s writing on habitus provides a useful lens for understanding the long-term practice(s) of police. Bourdieu’s (1977) work on practice – using his theory of habitus and field – was based on his interactions with peasant groups in Algeria. Bourdieu believed that the theory of structuralism could never explain the complex ways of organising and cultural practices passed from generation to generation. It could not account for work practices, the communal way of living, gender roles, marriage ceremonies and other aspects of community life unique to the Algerian culture. He argued certain habits, practices and dispositions are developed and reproduced largely through socialization; practice therefore created social practices (Bourdieu, 1977). As Bourdieu (1990: 53) claims,

The conditioning associated with a particular class of conditionings of existence produce habitus, systems of durable, transposable dispositions, structured structures predisposed to function as structuring structures, that is, as principles which generate and organize practices and representations that can be objectively adapted to their outcomes, without presupposing a conscious aiming at ends or an express mastery of the operations necessary in order to obtain them. Objectively ‘regulated’ and ‘regular’ without being in any way the product of obedience to rules, they can be collectively orchestrated without being the product of the organizing action of a conductor.

Habitus is a collective (not individual) process. It is embodied and embedded in who we are mainly through socialisation with others. That is, the generative dispositions of family, class, social environment and cultural traditions create a habitus within a social field. Dispositions, habits and practices produce the habitus thereby creating social practices, and this can be applied to the practice and field of policing.

Field

Bourdieu uses the term field to describe the space or field of struggle. A field is a system of social positions, a field of struggle where agents compete or confront each other. Field and habitus work together; habitus is the practices and dispositions of agents that are brought to the field. According to Bourdieu (1998), a field can be maintained, conserved or transformed. In Australia, the field of policing and police education and training is complex and multilayered; it includes individual state and territorial jurisdictions, higher education and the vocational education and training (VET) system. It also includes police in leadership positions including police commissioners, senior police and management, state governments, Council of Australian Governments (COAG) and the Australia New Zealand Policing Advisory Agency as well as the State and Territory police associations. Further, other players in the field of policing include the Australian public and community and, from time to time, various campaign groups, social movements and the media.

Emotional work and management

Emotions are integral to connecting with and understanding environments and defining events and guiding behaviour (Izard, 2002). In workplaces where emotions are regulated, a practice that Hochschild (1997: 138) refers to as ‘emotional labor’, feelings are managed in accordance with cultural, organisational and peer-group rules and expectations. While the regulation of emotions might be seen as appropriate, as a measured response to the provision of a service, the emotion is still present and experienced (Tsai and Huang 2002; van Gelderenet al., 2011).

Barber et al. (2009: 182) have argued that police work necessitates the demonstration and expression of both positive and negative emotion. This was determined based on the different types of work in which police engage: ‘service-oriented’ and ‘force-oriented’ (Barber et al. 2009: 182). The former can be understood in the context of community policing and the latter, law enforcement. In expanding on these areas of police and emotion work, the researchers identified ‘surface acting (masking or hiding felt emotions to conform to emotional display rules)’ and ‘deep acting (modifying the actual felt emotions to conform to emotional display rules)’ (Barber et al., 2009: 183, emphasis in original). They found that force-oriented work involved the suppression of positive emotions and the expression of negative emotions while the service-oriented work involved the expression of positive emotions and the suppression of negative emotions (Barber et al., 2009: 183). The dynamic nature of police work might well require police officers to shift between expressing and/or suppressing positive and negative emotions (Barber et al., 2009: 185). Hochschild (1997: 11) draws connections between emotions and managing emotions. She starts by declaring that:

Emotions always involve the body; but they are not sealed biological events. Both the act of ‘getting in touch with feeling’ and the act of ‘trying to feel’ become part of the process that makes the feeling we get in touch with what it is. In managing feeling, we partly create it.

Further to this, Hochschild (1997: 11) sees ‘culture’ rather than ‘instinct’ trespassing upon and driving feelings and emotions. She notes various points where this occurs: ‘recognizing’, naming, assessing, controlling and communicating feeling. Particular cultures (read habitus) can therefore influence how relationships are perceived, how experiences are interpreted, how and why feelings are controlled.

Embodiment

O’Loughlin (2006: 6) describes embodiment as that which is ‘expressed through the productive activities of bodies …’. A central plank of O’Loughlin’s work is that she sees bodies as being ‘productive’, having ‘potential’, being generative, rather than merely seen as passively inscribed and disciplined. Again, the significance of agency is highlighted to disturb the notion of constrained bodies and subjects, as O’Loughlin (2006: 9–10) claims,

Body-subjects are not simply subject to external agency, but are simultaneously agents in their own social-construction of the world … Gesture, body orientation and proximity are vehicles through which the body-subjects’ meanings are actually expressed, and expression presupposes an intersubjective encounter. If the communicative body is about the sharing of others’ embodied experience in their pleasure and happiness as well as their unease and suffering, emotion is absolutely fundamental to its functioning as embodied subject.

Integral to the embodied subject are the interactive, relational and emotive dimensions associated with the activities of the body. Emotion is ever-present in the activities of the body because ‘an adequate understanding of social agency demands a concept of embodied agency’ (O’Loughlin, 2006: 10). Merleau-Ponty (2002: 409) claims that the body is a ‘knowledge-acquiring apparatus’. He claims that being in the world is a process of acquiring knowledge and this process is not a cognitive act. Emotions can be understood as ‘embodied modes of being’, deeply connected to ‘culture and self’ (Bendelow and Williams, 1997: xvi, emphasis in original). Such an understanding of the body is relevant to practice and learning.

Csordas (1994: 4) raised concerns about the ways in which the term and conceptions of the body are used. In particular, when the body and the person are presented as synonymous/interchangeable, the body is likely to be viewed as an object ‘devoid of intentionality and intersubjectivity’. Such a conception, conveys a passive, negative agency and ignores the significance of emotions as the ‘embodied approach to social agency and social (inter)action’ (Bendelow and Williams, 1997: xiv).

Data, police work and emotional management

Police are regularly confronting situations that produce profound ‘negative emotions’, which need to be managed (Berking et al., 2010: 329; Williams et al., 2010). Research has revealed that police officers struggle to recognise and endure negative emotions and can then have trouble participating in situations that involve heightened emotions (Berking et al., 2009; Williams et al., 2010). The data reveal examples of a ‘detached rationality’, which is valued over emotion, valorising an unbiased, impassive representation of professionalism in policing. O’Loughlin (2006: 10) argues that emotions are intrinsically connected to our personhood.

An understanding of embodied praxis requires that we address the issue of emotion, for if the body is to be understood as more than that which constitutes individual subjectivity, then it must be conceptualised in its essentially relational and interactive dimensions, not simply in its socialised form.

The suppression of emotion in police work aligns with masculine notions of policing and represents a disembodied form of practice, one that reflects ‘calm disengagement, affectless order, and unquestioning obeisance’ (Drodge and Murphy, 2002: 425). This is supported by research of cultural and organisational factors that contribute to how emotions are regulated and how the rules of emotion work are determined, controlled, and enacted (van Gelderen et al., 2011; Williams et al., 2010). Rules constraining and suppressing the expression of emotions are in direct contrast to an embodied practice involving the synergy between internal and external perceptions of experiences. The data from this research found, for police in ‘Conundrum’, the connectedness of ‘inner experience’ and ‘outer experience’ is denied, this is represented well in the following statements by Jo and David, where the police persona or façade and the place of feelings in policing were explicit in Joe and David’s reflections.

In policing, people do suppress feelings significantly and sometimes that comes out in bad ways (Joe, senior police officer).

You try to keep your emotions to one side. If you go to a job and you’re too emotional to do your job, that’s no good. So, you’ve got to try to isolate, suppress it at least while you’re dealing with the situation and it might come out later in other ways, good or not so good. You’ve got to suppress your emotional response to get the job done and to protect yourself. Keep a lid on it so you can function. Not everyone can do it. Generally, our recruitment processes look for those who have a reasonably good control over their emotions (David, senior police officer and corporate manager).

Studies have found that police culture has imposed a ban on the expression of emotions (Williams et al., 2010), to which Joe and David clearly admitted. To put emotions aside and/or to suppress the emotions is a form of emotional management, as espoused by Hochschild (1997, 2012). These police officers may be feeling stressed or emotional but they need to put their 'emotions to the side' in order to perform effectively in their role. David’s statement on police recruitment strategies adds further weight to this practice (Hochschild, 2012). A recent longitudinal study of police recruits and emotion, mindfulness and resilience reveals the emotional detachment quickly becomes the norm for police officers and is reinforced in recruit training (Williams et al., 2010). Add to this, the recent reviews of Victoria Police by the Victorian Equal Opportunity and Human Rights Commission (2015) and by Cotton (2016) noted that putting one’s emotions aside was a key feature of the culture. This was affirmed by David who reinforced the need to suppress emotions in order ‘to do your job’ and ‘to protect yourself’. Such an attitude and approach rests within the vestiges of the masculine traditions of policing, underscored by an objective, detached self (Drodge and Murphy, 2002; Frewin et al., 2000).

Elliott’s comments, while supporting more proactive approaches to dealing with stressful situations, provided an illustrative bridge between emotional expression and gender perceptions.

I think [police officers] have got to learn how to deal with stress and situations and how to de-stress and I think they’ve got to learn to talk, be open and no matter how they feel that it might be unmanly or girly or whatever, you know… I think they need to be able to express themselves (Elliott, constable).

He raised valid concerns about police officers confronting trauma and stressful situations on an almost daily basis. For Elliott, the expression of feelings was necessary. In this respect, he was perhaps ahead of others. Whilst his advice was sage, police officers in this research emphasised the suppression and denial of emotions as a common practice (Ryan, 2016). Worthy of note was Elliott’s reference to the expression of feelings as ‘unmanly or girly’, implying the binary of emotional/feminine, unemotional/masculine or rational (masculine) and irrational (feminine), which nevertheless did not fit well with his inherent masculinity. His perceptions of what constituted masculine and feminine responses reinforced the stereotypical notions of gender and expressions of emotions.

Others claim that police officers have also tended to use humour (also referred to as black humour) to deal with the stressors of their work (Frewin et al., 2000; Innes, 2002). This is common practice of other disciplines involved in high risk, emergency work, such as nursing and other emergency services (Vivona, 2014; Young, 1995). Humour has the potential to reinforce shared experiences and knowing and to support a calm façade in the face of trauma (Vivona, 2014; Young, 1995). The importance of a calm demeanour recurred throughout this research. Appearing calm in the midst of crisis was the key to management of emotion and their perception of what constitutes the practice of a ‘good’ police officer.

Touchy-feely

Contemporary policing is seen as having increasing social responsibility. It has been described by some of the police officers as akin to welfare and social work functions and relegated to the realms of ‘soft’ policing, as opposed to ‘hard’, real police work; the command and control, authoritative style of policing. Increased social responsibility raises the spectre of relational, agential practice and therefore emotions. The of hard or real police work is enduring and remains dominant.

Gracie has been a police officer with ‘Conundrum’ for 26 years. Gracie described policing as:

[O]utcome-driven and very process-driven. Many police officers see themselves in charge of the outcomes rather than just the people. The people are secondary to the outcomes. When we’re out there doing policing, there’s no room for all this other stuff like thinking, feeling, and reflecting (Gracie, constable).

In this instance, Gracie acknowledged the potential for people to become ‘secondary to the outcomes’. People include one’s self and others. This approach exemplified an external focus and perception of experience with the potential for an internal focus to be reduced or disregarded (Merleau-Ponty 2002). Operating only from an external or outward focus involves the separation of mind, body and emotions from an experience. Yet, the body is inherently connected to and influenced by the context, people, culture, and gender within and organisation, becoming inscribed on the body through actions, discourses, behaviours values and practices. If as Merleau-Ponty (2002: 409) claims, the body is a ‘knowledge-acquiring apparatus’ we also learn attitudes, behaviours and the cultural practices of an organisation through habits, practices and dispositions that are readily accepted as a part of the job. As Bourdieu has revealed habitus is a structuring structure, one where practices both consciously and unconsciously, can become embedded within the habitus. As Bourdieu (1977: p.79, emphasis in original) claims:

It is because subjects do not, strictly speaking, know what they are doing that what they do has more meaning than they know. The habitus is the universalizing mediation which causes an individual agent’s practices, without either explicit reason or signifying intent, to be none the less “sensible’ and “reasonable”.

In part, for police this can be seen as adopting the police persona or façade, as a means of protecting themselves from the trauma of a situation, as noted earlier by David. Concerns for individual police officers and the efficacy of practice arise when an external focus becomes habituated and part of the cultural capital (Bourdieu 1998).

Gracie acknowledged:

While some police officers have a sense of their own emotions and things, I question their identification of their feelings. They might have a general sense but I don’t know how specific they’d be in knowing exactly what the feeling is … whether it’s anger or frustration or disappointment. It might just be something that feels negative or not right (Gracie, constable).

This reminded us of the study of police recruits by Williams et al. (2010) that found the habit of controlling and rejecting emotions resulted in limiting an individual’s ability and capacity to recognise and name emotions and to draw on them to manage behaviour. Here, police are expected to develop a feel for the game of policing. A disembodied police persona is a guarantee of acceptance and belonging in ‘Conundrum’. As Gracie stated:

To think or feel in a way that is different to anyone else is seen as a weakness even when other people have probably felt it too, it’s just not OK to say it or do it [show emotion] (Gracie, constable).

One police officer in Cotton’s (2016: 47) report of the findings of a review of mental health and wellbeing of employees in Victoria Police stated:

My very first job was the death of a child. My sergeant moved the box of tissues away from me and told me I needed to suck it up.

The binary of emotion/weakness reflects the current police habitus that ensures the practices of emotions being managed: suppressed, modified or deliberately misrepresented or falsified. In policing, the police persona or façade represents significant cultural capital, determining how experiences are interpreted and how feelings and emotions are controlled (Hochschild, 1997). Pedagogies regulating emotions are driven by organisational and peer-group expectations and an emphasis on thinking rather than feeling. These practices are maintained and reproduced through the habitus. Other police officers in this research raised similar concerns about expressing emotions.

It’s a cultural tendency to connect with the head [thinking] and not the emotions, not to connect with things seen as touchy-feely (Gracie, constable).

The pervasive nature of masculine culture is evident here as it encroached and impacted on emotions at every point from acknowledging feelings and emotions to naming, evaluating and controlling them through to showing and communicating emotions (Hochschild, 1997: 11). To perform otherwise or differently from cultural expectations can be problematic. The habitus of policing maintains emotional management.

In thinking about learning, Gracie referred to the interrelationship between emotions and the personal when she said:

I learn more from experiences that have an emotional impact on me because they have connected with me personally (Gracie, constable).

Gracie’s reference to emotions and the personal in learning reflects the Western tradition of separating the ‘body from mind’. Yet Gracie clearly states, she learns more from experiences that have an emotional impact on her. Gracie’s stance linking emotions to learning is uncommon in ‘Conundrum’, in order to survive in the contemporary habitus of policing, she will need to learn to manage her emotions (Hochschild, 1997, 2012).

Gracie acknowledged, however,

There are some police officers who do it [thinking, feeling, reflecting] really well, but that’s where they really stand out and that’s often where they get labelled as more of a “touchy-feely” type of person because they’re more open to problems and dealing with some of those emotions with other people and the public as well (Gracie, constable).

Ridicule and a devaluing of those who demonstrated a reflexive approach to their practice reinforced aspects of the masculine discourse and values, Harry’s comments gave further texture to Gracie’s observations:

Feelings are a difficult one. You don’t really express your feelings. People just don’t really show their feelings at work very often. Sometimes, if you do a really good job, people pat you on the back, but, yeah, I mean if it was a kind of really difficult job where people might get a little bit upset about it you might ask, “Are you all right?” (Harry, constable)

Harry’s opening statement that the topic of feelings was a difficult one to consider is compelling. His example in relation to a ‘difficult job’ where people ‘might get a little bit upset’ seemed to typify a potential masking of feelings and emotions (Hochschild, 1997, 2012). It also reflected a tokenistic attempt at empathy with a cursory acknowledgement of and response to a colleague’s or other’s expressed emotion.

Learning with feeling?

Typically, and traditionally, education has separated the cognitive and affective domains and focused on the cognition (Dewey, 1916; Dumont et al., 2010). The data from this research reveals a disconnection between the two domains resulting in a disembodied approach to learning, as well as practice. We note that, in reviewing his definition of learning, Jarvis (2006: 13, emphasis in original) refers to the integration of cognitive, social, emotional, agential, and contextual elements.

… the whole person – body (genetic, physical and biological) and mind (knowledge, skills, attitudes, values, emotions, beliefs and senses): experiences a social situation, the perceived content of which is then transformed cognitively, emotively or practically (or through any combination) and integrated into the person’s individual biography resulting in a changed (or more experienced) person.

Attention to feelings or emotions therefore provides a foundation for profound, transformative learning (Mezirow, 2000). The literature relating to police training and education has revealed strong commitments to traditional notions of learning with the transmission of knowledge, or information and skills, with little if any attention to emotions (Ryan, 2016). The rationalist perspective of experience sees emotion misrepresenting experience, the subjective perspective contaminating the objective or true perspective, which limits thinking, practice, and learning that results from a reliance on experience without emotion. This aligns with an external perception of learning as opposed to one that integrates internal and external perceptions that engender deeper learning.

Police training at ‘Conundrum’ is counter to what we know about contemporary adult learning pedagogy and practice. We now know that adults need a mixture of formal and informal learning experiences, coupled with professional practice through work integrated learning in order to be successful (Marsick and Watkins, 2015). As Jarvis (2006) notes the whole person is central to how we make meaning, our bodies and our minds experience a social situation, we perceive content then we integrate this with existing knowledge which is transformed cognitively, emotively, and practically before we integrate this into our biographies or identity as a learner/worker. Embodied educative experiences help professionals build their knowledge and expertise, they are transformed through this process and develop further expertise because of it.

With police in ‘Conundrum’, however, we note this holistic process of learning is thwarted through the practice of managing the emotions, the creation of a persona devoid of feelings, or able to feel with(in) limitations. This is compounded by educative experiences that prioritise concrete material or applied learning pedagogies, less emphasis on critical thinking and reflecting on problems of practice that relate to the ‘self’. The discourse of policing being a ‘craft’ or a ‘trade’, and of police education needing to be ‘hard and real’ and not ‘too soft’ continues to dominate police practices. The habitus of policing is masculine, hard and real, where command and control cultures dominate. It is a craft and a trade, where reproduction of practice-based pedagogies influence police training. It is a field where master and apprentice-style practices are accepted as the norm and passed on by experienced police to novice recruits. In order to be successful, police in ‘Conundrum’ need to embrace the habits and dispositions of policing practice: a practice that is predominantly applied and apprentice-based.

Further, a major theme in the data revealed that police officers were aware of the need to manage their emotions (Hochschild, 1997, 2012) and is illustrated here in the narratives of David, Elliot, and Joe. On the other hand, in the narratives of Harry and Gracie, we read some suspension of the modernist practices of ‘Conundrum’. They acknowledge that whole person educative experiences are needed to build a professional police workforce.

We acknowledge the contemporary habitus of policing is complex and the practices are longstanding. There are risks associated with policing and high stakes involved when police get it wrong. We argue the long held disposition of antipathy towards formal learning, enshrined in current residual programmes of ‘training’ that focus on applied learning pedagogies, rather than a comprehensive programme of education and training, impede effective practice in ‘Conundrum’. What this research has uncovered is police need a holistic education programme that links theory to practice, encourages critical cognition, and provides opportunities for applied and experiential learning, including emotional reflexivity.

Conclusion

We return to the indeterminate swampy zones of police practice to re-imagine what could be. Police education and training is in need of urgent review and change. It is out of date and inadequate for policing now. This has been reinforced by previous Royal Commissions of Inquiry, the first occurring 29 years ago, and reiterated in an inquiry in 2016. A myriad of research and resources for adult and practice-based learning, professional practice and learning exist to inform any review and change.

In conclusion, the habitus in the field of policing, police education and training in ‘Conundrum’ need to be disrupted and changed. Central to realising disruption and genuine change, however, is the need to change the practices, dispositions, habits and cultures of policing – the established ways of talking, seeing and knowing that are resistant to change. At the very least, a holistic education programme engendering metacognition and reflexive practice through opportunities for comprehensive professional supervision (mentoring, debriefing) needs to be developed, endorsed, genuinely supported by ‘Conundrum’, and constantly evaluated.

Footnotes

Declaration of conflicting interests

The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Cheryl Ryan is a Lecturer in Applied Learning at Deakin University. Her research is on police education and training, adult education and professional learning. Cheryl is a member of the Australian Council of Deans Education, Vocational Education and Training group. Her current research explores second chance learning and lifelong learning in Neighbourhood Houses.

Tracey Ollis is a Senior Lecturer in Adult Vocational Education and Training at Deakin University. Her research is on adult learning, professional learning and adult community education. She is interested in epistemological and ontological issues relating to 'practice' in education. Tracey is the Chief Editor of the Australian Journal of Adult Learning. Her current research explores second chance learning and lifelong learning in Neighbourhood Houses.

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Disembodied police practice: “Keep a lid on it so you can function”

Abstract

Keywords

Introduction

Methodology

Analysis

Police research and context

Police habitus

Field

Emotional work and management

Embodiment

Data, police work and emotional management

Touchy-feely

Learning with feeling?

Conclusion

Footnotes

Declaration of conflicting interests

Funding

References