Speaker: Ólafur Örn Bragason

Chair: Guðmundur Ævar Oddsson

In this presentation the focus is on examining the preparation of police education reform in Iceland, where the National Police Academy was closed in 2016 and a new two-year diploma was established at the University of Akureyri, along with the effects of this reform. Initial findings from a historical discourse analysis on policy documents leading to this reform will be presented as follows.

In recent decades, police education in many countries has shifted from special training schools run directly by the police to university degrees (e.g., Terpstra and Schaap, 2022). In Iceland, the police basic education was reformed to the university level in 2016. This reform was based on reports from two working groups formed by the Ministry of the Interior in 2014 and 2015 and two legal texts from 2016 leading up to this education reform. We use a a six-step approach to analyze discourse regarding specific issues and is often utilized on policy documents (Jóhannesson, 2010; Sharp & Richardson, 2001). The main questions in this study are: What characterizes the discourse of police education reform in Icelandic policy documents? What are the discourse’s main legitimating principles, tensions, and contradictions?

We identified two contrasting legitimating principles in the discourse: the validation of police competence through a university diploma versus policing as a unique public-sector profession. There is a discontinuity in both social structures and practices, leading to a new approach to knowledge development via research and university education. This shift has produced uncertainty, as well as illustrating the tensions that can occur when traditional vocational training is transformed into university programs. These findings could have implications for other occupations seeking professional status with a strong tradition of control over their own basic training and knowledge bases.