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The aim of this dissertation is to build knowledge about the transition from an educational to an occupational context. More specifically, the dissertation focuses on the transition from police education to police practice by studying the way police students and police officers perceive the importance of a number of professional competences related to their future occupations. The aim is also to study whether the importance of these competences has changed between the time of their police education and their work as police officers and to what extent the respondents perceive that police education contributed to the development of these competences.

Methodologically, this dissertation is in some parts based on cross-sectional data. In other parts, it is based on longitudinal data and uses a combination of both quantitative and qualitative data. The quantitative data are based on questionnaires given to police students at the beginning and end of their police education and to police officers after a few years of police practice. The questionnaire used in sub studies B, C and D is part of the European cooperation project called Recruitment, Education, and Career in the Police (RECPOL). The qualitative data are based on interviews. Theoretically, a frame factor perspective is used to analyse and understand the dissertation’s empirical data.

The results show a change in the way the respondents perceive the importance of the studied competences over time. The police students generally valued theprofessional competences higher at the beginning of their education and significantly lower at the end of their education. As police officers, however, they valued the importance of these competences almost as high as they did at the beginning of their education. The results show small differences between how male and female police students and police officers valued these competences. When the respondents reflected on the reasons why the significance of the competences changed over time, different themes emerged. The results also show that police education’s contribution to the development of these competences is clearly lower than the extent to which they are perceived as important for work as police officers. In the interviews, reflections on the reasons for this indicated a discrepancy between the educational and occupational contexts.

One conclusion is that police students at the end of their education need to better understand that they have not fully learnt everything they need to know and that they are becoming police officers with the capacity to continue developing professionally and contributing to the police as a learning organization.