‘We need a night shift’: Notes on the failure of an educational design for police managers

Abstract

This article describes describes the outcomes of an attempt to provide a management development experience for police managers, which took as part of its goal the genesis of reflective practitioners. The author attempts to illustrate the fact that in broad terms the project was not successful in this ambition. Far from being able to ‘critique’ the reflective practitioner, the team were never really able to develop such a person in the first instance. The author outlines the evidence for the failure and then suggests an explanation which draws from knowledge of the social interactions which generate the police occupational cultural milieu. © 1999, Taylor & Francis Group, LLC.