Factors Related to the Students’ Perceived Effectiveness of Police Internship Curriculum

• Main Authors: CHENG, CHIA-CHIANG, 鄭家強
• Other Authors: JOU, SUSYAN
• Format: Others
• Language: zh-TW
• Published: 2015
• Online Access: http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/64681363967835501065

碩士 === 國立臺北大學 === 犯罪學研究所 === 103 === Internship is the important bridge between police education and practice. For police students, police daily work and special operation are more understandable through proper internship. A good internship can make knowledge in books more practical on streets and shorten the transition period from a student to a professional police officer. This study investigated the current police internship curriculum, so called “sandwiches” design – in-class education, first internship, in-class education, second internship, in-class education, graduation” and how effective this design is perceived by the police students who received it. The study also examined factors related to this perceived effectivenss by the interviewees, such as the motivation of enrolling in the police college and police professon, assigned internship mentors and institutions, and their working environment. The study distributed a survey to 272 former police college students who graduated within one-year and currently work in Taipei City and New Taipei City. Main findings include: 1. The subjects overall perceived their internship as effective and helpful. 2. The subjects’ background, internship marks, organizational culture etc. insignificantly affect their perception on the effectiveness of police internship. 3. The most significant factor related to the perceived effectiveness of police internship at the individual level is the subjects’ motivation to learn. 4. The most significant factor at the environmental level is the internship mentors who were assigned to the students. The most effective way of learning to be a police officer is the hands-on experiences directly from these instructors if the later are willing to devote their time to the students. The study therefore recommends the following suggestions to improve the police internship curricurum. First, to implement different levels of psychological assessments to screen studehts with little or no motivation and provide them with more careen counseling; second, to implement a better and more objective evalution system to students’ internship performance; last, to provide more incentive to internship mentors/instructors or inspire them to devote more to their young colleagues.