3.30 Building the evidence base for effective tutoring of police recruits (Phase 2)

Academic team: Dr Emma Williams, Dr Holly Taylor-Dunn, Dr Nicky Miller, Benjamin Bowles and (on secondment from Leeds Beckett University) Dr Tom Cockroft
Policing partners: Norfolk Constabulary and Suffolk Constabulary
Status: Complete

This project seeks to make sense of a key factor influencing the success of both the Uplift programme and the PEQF – the Tutor Constable role. The Tutor Constable is traditionally an experienced officer who supervises new police officers as they experience, for the first time, the different contexts, interactions and situations which make up the occupational world of the police officer. This role has attracted little attention in existing research addressing police education and socialisation, yet those research findings that we do have access to suggest that tutoring occupies a somewhat fragile and undefined space in police training arrangements.

Why then is the Tutor Constable role so important? Research and anecdotal evidence suggest that officers in this role exert a very substantial degree of influence on the working practices of new officers. Similarly, research from the wider field of organisational socialisation indicates that effective assimilation into organisations has a host of positive impacts - including greater effectiveness, quicker proficiency, reduced attrition and lower recorded levels of workplace stress.

For Phase 1, the research aims to build up a picture of tutoring practices throughout the forces of England and Wales and to contextualise these against existing research literature in the area, drawn from a variety of comparator professions.

In Phase 2, we will seek to investigate the experiences and perceptions of tutoring held by those who undertake the role.

Taken together, these phases of work will provide a new knowledge base from which to inform future police tutoring arrangements.

Outputs

TitleOutputs typeLead academicYear
Phase 2 report: Building the evidence base for the tutoring of police recruitsFinal reportCockroft, T2023

News

CPRL CPD programme sets new benchmark for investigative excellence

The States of Jersey Police recently completed a transformative Continued Professional Development (CPD) programme that is setting a new benchmark in investigative excellence and fostering increased public confidence in law enforcement. 

Designed and delivered by Ian McNeill, Senior Lecturer in CPD Development in Policing at the Centre for Policing Research and Learning (CPRL) at the Open University, the programme was developed in collaboration with the Operation Soteria Joint Unit and academics from across all six pillars of the Operation Soteria national programme.

28th April 2025