Coaching and evidence-based learning

Although the Ontario Provincial Police has existed since 1909, the Ontario Provincial Police Academy has only existed in various forms since the first ‘School of Instruction’ was created in 1920. For the first 11 years of the organizations existence, training was not formally delivered. In fact it was very informal and a basic trial and error process by shadowing an already serving, experienced officer. Clearly, over the last century, there have been a significant change in how training is designed and delivered. The Canadian Association of Chiefs of Police Research Foundation, Canadian Association of Police Educators, and the Canadian Society for Evidence Based Policing, among others, are all committed to pursuing a more evidence based approach to training. In attempting to address the future training needs of police officers, the curriculum needs to be designed with a constructivist principled approach. According to a number of researchers, the essential features of constructivism in practice include the following: