Page 14 - Top Cover Issue 15

14 TOP COVER MAY 2019

BLOW-UP DOLLS AND A HAMMER

Is there a place for social learning on the National Firearms Instructors Course?

Training can look easy, but it rarely is. this means is that we often think of an aggressive and violent way. The doll
And it certainly never is when you are teaching and learning as basically was pushed, slapped and kicked and
training firearms instructors. So much copying things – the teacher has was unable to defend itself except by
can go wrong, expectations are so high, knowledge of skills and the learner’s simply bouncing back. Children were
and there is so much knowledge in job is to imitate it. However, in first shown the film and then put in
the room that you have to ask yourself working, professional environments, the same room with the same doll to
what, if anything, can be taught here? this is not really true. When real see what they would do.
The National Firearms Instructors problems arise, we work together to
Course (NFIC), run by Kent Police in solve them and learn how to do our job ...and a hammer?
partnership with Canterbury Christ better as a result. You might even say Once again, what Bandura observed
Church University, is a case in point. that by doing this we actually define is not, perhaps, very surprising. The
The University has the job of leading what our job is. children treated the doll in the same
the delivery of ‘academic input’ in The key thing is that this kind of way that they had been shown: the
situ. Two weeks’ work on training learning is 100% practical. Blue sky kids used Bobo as a punchbag. What
techniques sits in weeks two and three ideas are great, and we often develop is perhaps more interesting, though,
of a seven-week programme, leading to new ideas and new ways of doing was the level of aggression and
national recognition as an instructor. things in the process. But the solutions violence that the children displayed in
That leaves just two weeks to get up have to work for the people who are Bandura’s experiment. The kids went
to speed in the training techniques going to use them, and they must work well beyond anything that the adult
needed when instructors go back with the resources which are available in the film did. Where the adult had
to force and take responsibility for or can realistically be acquired, just pushed and kicked the doll, the
training firearms officers. invented or otherwise obtained. children took hammers and even guns
But while the pressure of facilitating Which takes us to the main issue to poor Bobo. You can see all this on a
this is high, readers of articles in past in this article: blow up dolls and a popular video sharing website by the
issues of Top Cover will know that hammer attack. way – it is fascinating to watch. At
the whole thing is also extremely times it’s quite scary to see just how far
interesting, hugely varied and, now Blow up dolls… the kids will go once they have been
and again, even fun. Many trainees are Back in 1957 – stay with us on this given the message that it’s OK to be
surprised to hear that the trainers learn – Albert Bandura, a social scientist, horrible to the defenceless Bobo.
a lot, too, during these programmes, noticed that young children tend But so what? Kids can be aggressive,
and this feeds into many of the to copy what adults do. No great for sure, and showing them violent
teaching and training decisions made discovery, of course, and the interesting films might make this worse. But the
as part of the NFIC programme. thing is not really what children copy, real point is that Bandura was just one
than what they do when they go of a group of ‘social learning’ theorists
Social learning beyond simple copying. whose ideas are, I think, really useful
One of the most important decisions, Essentially, it’s about how children to have in firearms training. Again,
as a trainer, is the deliberate choice of create new behaviour rather than bear with us on this; our point is
‘social’ learning approaches which work simply imitating it. To study this, that to train well, you have to work
especially well in the NFIC context. Bandura did a set of experiments with your trainees as a social group,
This is because social learning places involving – yes, you guessed it – an not against them. Bandura reminds
great emphasis on social context and inflatable doll. A large inflatable us that a great deal of professional
the working environment; learning ‘Bobo’ doll was put in a room, and learning takes place in social situations,
happens in social contexts and as an adult was filmed physically – and where we learn by observing what our
a result of social processes. What entirely gratuitously – attacking it in peers do. We can invent and change,

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