Improving police performance by training officers to manage stress

Suitable for 14-19-year olds (secondary and high schools, and college), this article and accompanying activity sheet can be used in the classroom, STEM clubs and at home.

This resource links to KS4 and KS5 biology and psychology.

It can also be used as a careers resource and links to Gatsby Benchmarks:
Gatsby Benchmark 2: Learning from career and labour market information
Gatsby Benchmark 4: Linking curriculum learning to careers

• This teaching resource explains the work of Dr Judith Andersen, a Canadian researcher specialising in psychophysiology and health, Dr Harri Gustafsberg, a Finnish retired police officer who now works as a mental resilience coach, and Dr Joseph Arpaia, a psychiatrist. They are training police officers to manage stress by controlling the physiological outputs caused by psychological inputs.

• This resource also contains interviews with the team and offers an insight into careers in psychophysiology. If your students have questions for the team, they can send them through the Futurum Careers website.

• The activity sheet provides ‘talking points’ (based on Bloom’s Taxonomy) to prompt students to reflect on the team’s research and challenges them to conduct their own psychophysiology experiment.

This resource was first published by Futurum Careers, a free online resource and magazine aimed at encouraging 14-19-year-olds worldwide to pursue careers in science, tech, engineering, maths, medicine (STEM) and social sciences, humanities and the arts for people and the economy (SHAPE).

If you like these free resources, or have suggestions for improvements, please let us know and leave us some feedback. Thank you!