Pedagogical Field Agents Training System

Elena Sokolova

, Galina Andreeva

, Olga Nikitina

and Lyudmila

Pavlova

Academy of the FPS of Russia, Ryazan, Russia

Research Institute of the Federal Penitentiary Service of Russia, Moscow, Russia

Keywords: Field Agent, Federal State Educational Standards Of Higher Education, Officer Work, Code Of Ethics,

Interdepartmental Pedagogical Training System.

Abstract: The research presented in the work was carried out in order to identify the methodological basis to create a

holistic pedagogical system of field agents training regardless of the departmental profile of their professional

activities. Taking into account the analysis of current legislation and federal state educational standards of

higher education, as well as interviews of various categories of administrative and managerial personnel of

universities and veterans of law enforcement agencies, it was established that the right to carry out officer

work belongs to a wide range of bodies of executive power. At the same time, there is no unified system of

pedagogical training of field agents. It is expedient to form a system of an interdepartmental format on the

basis of common spiritual and moral values and norms of officer work, corresponding to its goals and

objectives. The program of education and the schedule of educational work, which act as mandatory elements

of educational programs, may be used to create the mechanism to implement the system.

1 INTRODUCTION

One of the main priorities of public policy in the

current context of political and economic instability

is to ensure personal security and national security in

general. An essential role in solving this primary task

is played by officer work carried out by authorized

bodies and officials. The professionalism of field

agents depends on the timely identification and

successful opposition to internal and external threats

to the state and the interests of its citizens.

In the context of dynamic changes in the field of

educational policy, accompanied by a revision of

federal state educational standards of higher

education in a number of specialties and areas of

professional training in the field of defense and

security of the State, the analysis of the pedagogical

system of field agents training in accordance with the

requirements of our time is of special concern.

So, in 2020, federal state educational standards of

higher education in such areas of training and

specialties as 40.03.01 Jurisprudence, 40.05.02 Law

Enforcement, 40.05.01 Legal Support of National

https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9983-2653

https://orcid.org/0000-0002-3951-1815

https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6596-3719

http://orcid.org//0000-0002-0057-7024

Security, 38.05.01 Economic Security, 38.05.02

Customs and others were significantly updated in

Russia.

Moreover, attention is paid to the fact that training

of personnel in the field of officer work in the Russian

Federation is carried out not as part of an independent

educational program, but is represented by

departmental specializations and profiles within

various educational programs of higher education.

This approach to the training of field agents, in turn,

makes the issue of the existence of unified

pedagogical principles and axiological foundations in

training personnel for officer work in accordance with

its tasks declared in the legislation, relevant.

The analysis of the scientific literature of recent

years shows that researchers pay close attention to

certain aspects of training operational employees,

such as physical training (Martynenko, Kamnev,

2021), readiness to act in extreme situations

(Trufanov, 2017; Sommer et al., 2017), fire training

(O'Neill et al., 2018; Zhan, Shi, 2021), language

training (Gorsheneva, 2019), psychological training

(Romanovskaya, 2017; Christopher et al., 2018;

Cojean et al., 2020) and prevention of professional

Sokolova, E., Andreeva, G., Nikitina, O. and Pavlova, L.

Pedagogical Field Agents Training System.

DOI: 10.5220/0010629900003152

In Proceedings of the VII International Scientiﬁc-Practical Conference “Criminal Law and Operative Search Activities: Problems of Legislation, Science and Practice” (CLOSA 2021), pages

113-117

ISBN: 978-989-758-532-6; ISSN: 2184-9854

113

deformation (Borisova, 2017; Faulkner et al., 2020),

technical training (Skvortsov, Luchter, 2020), the

formation of tolerance (Brown et al., 2020). In a

conceptual, systematic format training issues are

considered by the authors only in relation to

individual departments (Voloshin, 2021; Ibrahim,

2020). At the same time, methodological studies of

the field agents training as a holistic pedagogical

system are not conducted.

Thus, the aim of this study is to find a

methodological basis for building a holistic

pedagogical system of field agents training regardless

of the departmental profile of their professional

activities.

The hypothesis of the research, in turn, is the

assumption that an interdepartmental pedagogical

system of field agents training, based on general

moral and axiological principles that correspond to

the very nature of officer work, can be formed due to

its tasks clearly defined by law.

To achieve this goal and to test the hypothesis put

forward, the following research objectives were

identified:

 to review the system of field agents training,

based on federal state higher education standards,

 to identify the general non-departmental

specifics of operational-search activities;

 to identify possible modalities and

mechanisms of the establishment of an

interdepartmental pedagogical field agents training

system.

2 MATERIALS AND METHODS

During the study, the researchers analyzed current

federal laws, as well as federal state educational

standards of higher education in enlarged groups of

specialties 40.00.00 Jurisprudence, 38.00.00

Economics and Management.

Interviews with administrative and managerial

staff of universities organizing the educational

process as part of the training of personnel for bodies

and institutions of the Federal Penal Service of Russia

in the departmental specialization «Officer work» as

well as with veterans of internal affairs bodies

previously engaged in operational-search activities

were conducted. Interview questions were aimed at

clarifying the basic values of officer work and the

conditions for their assimilation by future employees

in the educational process.

The opinions of 48 respondents from among law

enforcement veterans and members of the university

community, presented on the social knowledge

exchange service Quora on the peculiarities of the law

enforcement training system in the United States and

its differences from classical legal education

(https://www.quora.com/Why-arent-police-officers-

required-to-go-to-law-school) were analyzed.

3 RESULTS AND DISCUSSION

From the analysis of Art. 13 of the Federal Law «On

Officer Work» dated 12.08.1995 No. 144-FL it

follows that these activities on the territory of the

Russian Federation are entitled to be carried out by

internal affairs bodies, federal security service bodies,

federal executive authority in the field of state

security, customs authorities, bodies of the Foreign

Intelligence Service of Russia and the Federal Penal

Service. Almost all of these bodies have departmental

educational organizations in their system that train

personnel for service in the relevant bodies.

At the same time, specialized universities of the

named departments implement various educational

programs of higher education, of which only one is in

the specialty 40.05.02. Law enforcement activities

have a departmental specialization «Officer Work»

recorded in the federal state educational standard,

which allows purposeful training of students in this

direction, taking into account the tasks defined by law

and the requirements of modern practice in protection

of life, health, human and civil rights and freedoms,

property, and ensuring the safety of society and the

state.

This educational program is implemented only in

the universities of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of

Russia and the Federal Penal Service of Russia.

It should be noted that the Russian customs

academy within the educational program of a

bachelor degree 40.03.01 Law offers the

departmental profile «Officer Work of Customs

Authorities» that fully meets the requirements of the

corresponding federal state educational standard of

the higher education according to which the

educational organization has the right to establish

independently a profile of the program of a bachelor

degree by orientation of its contents to the field of

professional activity of graduates.

Universities of the Federal Security Service of

Russia, in turn, implement a wide range of

educational programs of various orientations, of

which an educational program in the special field

40.05.01 Legal Support of National Security is aimed

directly at training field agents. The federal state

educational standard of this special field provides the

following specializations of the program: criminal

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law, state and law, civil law, international law,

military law. At the same time, within the framework

of the specializations «Criminal Law» and «Military

Law» in-depth profiling in military-professional and

special professional training is allowed. In particular,

the Academy of the FSS of Russia, while

implementing the program of the special field

40.05.01 Legal Support of National Security,

Specialization ‒ Criminal Law, provides two areas of

special professional training: «Officer Work and

foreign language» and «Officer Work and modern

information technologies», directly adapted to the

goals and objectives of professional career activities

of graduates.

Thus, it can be stated that departmental

universities, which are a part of the systems of bodies

that have the right to carry out officer work in Russia,

implement various educational programs in terms of

content and orientation, including those that are

directly focused on the training of field agents. These

programs belong to such enlarged groups of special

fields as 40.00.00 Jurisprudence, 38.00.00 Economics

and management, a meaningful orientation of the

specifics of officer work as future professional and

professional activities of graduates are carried out

within the framework of departmental specializations

and specializations of special professional training.

In foreign countries, one can also note the practice

of specialized training of persons focused on the

fulfillment of special professional tasks, including the

part of officer work. In particular, training of police

officers and FBI officers in the United States takes

place in specialized educational organizations, and

not in university law schools.

An analysis of respondents' answers to the

question «Why police officers are not required to go

to law school», presented on the social knowledge

sharing service Quora, made it possible to draw the

following conclusions.

US law enforcement officers (police and special

agents of the FBI) receive special training and are not

required to have legal education. To perform

professional functions, they need to graduate from a

specialized certified academy or take specialized

courses in the profile of the planned service line.

Specialized universities in the United States

provide training based on the model of «best

practices», within which practical training prevails

over theoretical training, and it ultimately allows the

employee to fulfill the assigned service task.

Theoretical knowledge is limited to basic legal

courses in criminal law, including the criminal law of

the state where the service will take place, that is, it

includes knowledge only of the legal rules to be

applied in everyday practice. Police officers also

receive in-depth physical and educational training.

The main idea, which was most often repeated in

the answers of the respondents, was that the

professional activities of law enforcement officers did

not coincide in their content with legal activities. That

is why law enforcement officers are not required to

have legal education. In practice, persons with any

profile can be recruited, if they meet general

requirements (medical, reputational, etc.).

A similar approach is noted in domestic practice:

not only persons who have received specialized

education in the above-mentioned special fields of the

legal and economic profile can be accepted as field

agents. This situation puts forward the question of the

unity of pedagogical principles in field agents

training, regardless of the departmental affiliation of

educational organizations and the profile of education

received by them, resulting in the goals and objectives

of their further professional and professional

activities.

Departmental educational organizations for field

agents not only train, but also educate cadets and

students. The training process involves both the

process of knowledge transfer and formation of skills

and the assimilation of professional values.

Interviewing veterans of field agents makes it

possible to conclude that due to the specifics of the

methods of carrying out officer work and the very

content of this activity, it is invariably the sphere of

moral and legal conflicts for the employees

themselves, due to the need to constantly make their

own moral choices in everyday service, and for the

society, which is increasingly forced to seek a balance

between forced restrictions on the rights and

freedoms of citizens and tasks performed during

officer work.

In Russia, the requirement to comply with moral

and ethical requirements in the field of officer work

was first expressed by scientists in the 1960s and 70s.

(Ardavov, 2015). The interest to the problem was not

accidental, since strict observance of the rule of law,

protection of human and civil rights, issues of

professional distortion of the consciousness of field

agents largely depend on the theoretical development

of moral and ethical problems of the professional

activities of employees.

The current Federal Law «On Officer Work» of

12.08.1995 No. 144-FL establishes that officer work

are based on the constitutional principles of legality,

respect for and observance of human and civil rights

and freedoms, as well as on the principles of

conspiracy, a combination of vowels and tacit

methods and means (art. 3). This provision is rather

Pedagogical Field Agents Training System

115

general. It is known that the values of a particular

professional activity are fixed, as a rule, in ethical

codes.

It should be noted that in the systems of a number

of state executive bodies that have the right to carry

out operational and search activities, codes of ethics

and official conduct of employees have been adopted

and are in force. The requirements of these codes are

equally addressed to all employees, regardless of the

content of their professional and professional

activities.

In the context of this research, the initiative

author's draft of the ethical code of the operational

employee of the internal affairs bodies, prepared by

the team of authors in the early 1990s (Frolov et al.,

1991), is of some interest. This initiative was not

developed, but recorded the need to develop and

systematize the basic values of the field agents as a

defender of the rights and legitimate interests of the

society and an individual. The draft code contained

articles regulating the relationship of a field agent

with the population; officials; citizens assisting in the

fight against crime; victims; violators of the law,

including juvenile delinquents as well as behavior

with colleagues, the leader and conduct in personal

life. Among the main principles of the field agents'

professional ethics were the use of funds consistent

with only laws and universal human values; active

attitude to official duties; the ability to assume

responsibility; impartiality in service; continued

enforcement of the law and intolerance of misconduct

by other employees. The developers of the code of

ethics emphasized that operational work does not give

special privileges and income, it brings satisfaction

and pride.

The fundamental ideas of this project have not lost

their relevance and can be taken as a basis for the

development of an appropriate interdepartmental

code of ethics for employees carrying out officer

work. This document can put forward a single

pedagogical beginning for the field agents training, in

which educational work occupies a significant place.

As A.S. Makarenko rightly noted, that the goal of

education is an extensive program of a human

character, in which spiritual and moral values and

norms act as a systemic element. Training in the

higher educational system is especially relevant

today, in connection with changes in educational

legislation. Thus, according to the Federal Law «On

Amendments to the Federal Law» On Education in

the Russian Federation «on the Education of

Students» dated 31.07.2020 No. 304-FL, the working

program of education and the shedule of educational

work are recognized as mandatory elements of the

educational program.

4 CONCLUSIONS

A review of the scientific literature and training

practices of field agents showed that in spite of a

variety of training systems for different ministries and

departments, there is no holistic training programme

for field agents based on uniform pedagogical

principles. It seems advisable to establish an

interdepartmental system of field agents training,

which corresponds to the goals and objectives of

officer work as a special type of state activity in the

interests of an individual and the society.

Ethical standards and principles of officer work

can be taken as the basis to form a single

interdepartmental system. The network interaction of

specialized universities of various departments,

which has the right to carry out officer work, can be

used as the implementation mechanism to achieve

this aim.

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