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Purpose This study aims to examine how subgroups within a cohort of Swedish police students value different types of curricula content (i.e. new competencies versus enduring ones) in the context of the currently transforming landscape of basic police training.

Design/methodology/approach Drawing on a Swedish national survey (N = 369), the study examined variations in how students value new versus enduring police curricula content based on sociodemographic factors. Specifically, factors such as student age and gender and the institutional arrangements of education were tested using an independent t test.

Findings The study identified differences in values based on gender. Female students valued competencies such as communication, flexibility, diversity and decisiveness as more important in an educational setting than did males. Fewer differences were found in relation to institutional arrangement, and in-house students valued flexibility and communication skill as more important for educational curricula compared to university-based students. No differences were found in relation to age.

Originality/value This study adds knowledge to the question of how changes in occupational education policy develop in practice. More specifically, the study explored how students in educational programmes value new versus enduring competencies and whether differences can be identified based on sociodemographic factors. These questions are important because they expose sociodemographic conditions that influence how students value policy-driven skills versus enduring ones.

Professional development is important for the improvement of professional work. Particularly relevant to the concept of professional development is an occupation's character and the organizational arrangements for activities endorsing employees' professional development. In this article, police officers' professional development in the Swedish police organization is explored by analyzing officers' learning pathways and their experiences of crucial conditions that contribute to their professional development. Content analysis of interviews with six female and seven male police officers is conducted. The results show that diverging police responsibilities give rise to either self-directed or information-oriented learning pathways. Three aspects (i.e., the formal educational arrangement, the facilitation of learning by managers, and scheduled time for workplace learning) are seen as crucial conditions that endorse police officers' professional development in diverging ways due to the assigned responsibilities. These findings show that police officers' professional development is endorsed with differing strategic management patterns that affect the kinds of professional development activities that support different police positions.