CRIMINALISTIC AND POLICE STUDIES STUDENTS ’ ATTITUDES REGARDING TRAINING IN SPECIAL PHYSICAL EDUCATION

An anonymous poll was conducted among a group of 103 fi rst-year male students of the Police and Criminal Justice Academy following the end of the Special Physical Education I course and completion of pre-examination tasks in the 2008/09 school year. The aim of this research was to fi nd out the views of female fi rst-year students regarding the subject of Special Physical Education, which belongs to the group of general-professional subjects. The analysis of the poll results indicates that a large number of subjects holds that the subject in question is very signifi cant or that it is among subjects of signifi cance (94.17%), whereas the number of practical training hours is insuffi cient, being average (82.52%), and that it should be 4 lessons a week (39.81%) or 5 (31.07%). The subjects also expressed an important view of the number of theory lessons, which they found was satisfactory (58.25%) and that lessons should take place during both semesters, i.e. throughout the school year (86.41%). The students said that they preferred (87.38 %) the special part of the curriculum (hitting, levers, throws...) to the theoretical part. As for the students’ views related to achievement expectations in the observed subject, it can be inferred that 49.51 % subjects achieved results equaling or exceeding their expectations, whereas 46.60 % failed to achieve the desired results. A large number of subjects, 48 (46.60%) were of the opinion that the teachers and assistants engaged on this subject were extremely correct or correct, whereas 19 subjects (18.45%) stated that they were incorrect or that their conduct was disappointing.


INTRODUCTION
Special Physical Education (henceforth referred to as: SPE) is a subject taught at the Academy of Criminalistic and Police Studies (henceforth: KPA) in Belgrade and it belongs to the group of special vocational subjects.SPE is a part of a greater scientifi c area called Physical Education.The scientifi c foundations of SPE are found in humanities, such as pedagogy, psychology, sociology, andragogy, and anthropology, in which the social and psychological elements of the subject can be found (its educational and theoretical aspects), as well as in certain fi elds of medicine and biology, such as anatomy, physiology, and sport studies, where the practical foundations of the subject can be found (hands-on training or practical aspect).These foundations of the subject only emphasize the high complexity of and necessity for a broader education and practical skills the experts in this area must possess and, on the other hand, they point out to the complexity of training that students have to undergo in the course of their education in order to be able to effi ciently perform the duties of the occupation of their choosing (Roberg & Bonn, 2004;Kešetović, 2005;Blagojević, Dopsaj, i Vučković, 2008;Milanović, Radisavljević, i Pašić, 2010).
SPE has a tri-dimensional model of learning with three characteristic phases -basic, directed (streamed) and situational.SPE is conceived so as to ensure correlation with other scientifi c disciplines studied at KPA, fully respecting the professional profi le for which the students are prepared and ensuring that they achieve maximal results of the education (Milošević, Mudrić, Jovanović, Amanović, i Dopsaj, 2005 ).
Special Physical Education has undergone numerous transformations in the educational institutions (Police Academy, Police College, Academy of Criminalistic and Police Studies) which provide training for the Ministry of the Interior (MI) personnel, and these transformations were refl ected in the reduced number of lessons, as well as leaving out certain parts of the curriculum.Currently, SPE is a one-term subject, present in the fi rst three years of the academic studies and in the fi rst two years of the vocational studies.The weekly number of lessons is 3 exercises and 1 theoretical lesson (Janković et al., 2008).
The goal of this research is to establish the attitudes of the fi rst-year students of the Academy of Criminalistic and Police Studies in Belgrade about the subject of Special Physical Education, which belongs to the group of general-vocational subjects, since the goal of SPE, as an educational and training system, is to transform the students from the initial status and level of knowledge and training towards the level defi ned by the necessity for professional training and preparedness for performing operational and managerial tasks in the Ministry of the Interior.
The tasks of this research can be defi ned as establishing the attitudes of KPA students towards: 1.The importance of the subject of SPE, the participation of practical training in the system of education at the KPA and the need for practical training in SPE; 2. The distribution of theoretical and practical SPE training across terms; 3. The parts of SPE and special parts of SPE which students favour most; and 4. The expected outcome with respect to SPE and the attitudes of professors of this subject.
The obtained results concerning the students' attitudes should be indicative of their perception of the training process, of their compliance or disagreement with the actual projected concept of teaching, as well as of possible problems in the realization of SPE courses, and this presents a standard methodological procedure adopted by the University for different types of instruction (Dabović, Dobrijević, Miletić, Višnjić, i Miletić, 2009).The results can be used in the general process of evaluation or auto-evaluation of the SPE courses at KPA, as well as to bring about improvements in redesigning the curricula for next generation (Vučković, & Dopsaj, 2009).

METHOD
An anonymous poll was carried out among 103 fi rst-year male students of KPA following the completion of courses and the students' pre-exam tasks in the academic year 2008/09.The poll was based on a specially designed closed-type questionnaire (a number of answers offered out of which only one is to be chosen) which the respondents fi lled in anonymously (Šešić, 1978).
In order to obtain relevant data, the special questionnaire was designed, comprising 9 (nine) questions, phrased in such a way as to elicit answers indicative of the students' views regarding the subject of SPE.The measuring instrument was of the closed type with a possibility to choose more than of the answers offered.The questions in the questionnaire were short, clear and unambiguous, so that the respondents would readily understand them.The respondents were informed of the purpose and objectives of the research and instructed on how to choose their answers.In this way we ensured that the collected data could be processed and analyzed objectively.
The analysis of the attitudes of the fi rst-year male KPA students with respect to SPE instruction was presented using the descriptive method and distribution of frequency, which was then transformed to percentages and shown in 9 (nine) tables arranged according to the order of questions asked in the questionnaire.
SPE is suffi cient.Out of this number, 17 or 16.50% fi nd that the number of instruction classes is satisfactory and only 1 or 0.97% found that there is too much of it.In the opinion of 85 or 82.52% of respondents, the amount of practical instruction is either average or insuffi cient.Out of this number, 72 or 69.90% fi nd that the amount of practical training is insuffi cient.

RESULTS AND DISCUSSION
Table 1 shows the attitudes of students regarding the signifi cance of the subject.On the basis of obtained results a conclusion can be drawn that as many as 97 or 94% of the subjects were of the opinion that SPE is a particularly signifi cant subject or that it is one of the more signifi cant subjects.Out of this number, 77 or 74.76% found that SPE is an exceptionally signifi cant subject.A negligible number of subjects, 5 of them, thought that the subject was of average signifi cance and only 1 or 0.97% found that SPE belongs to less signifi cant subjects.On the basis of the obtained results, a conclusion can be drawn that KPA students recognize the contents of the subject of SPE as particularly important from the aspect of professional training.When asked to determine themselves regarding the needed number of lessons of SPE practical training, 73 respondents (70.87%) were of the opinion that it was necessary to extend this form of instruction to 4 (four) or 5 (fi ve) times a week.Out of this number, 32 students (31.07%) found that the practical SPE training should be extended to 5 (fi ve) times a week and 41 (39.81%) that this instruction should include as many as 4 (four) lessons a week.Out of the total number of respondents, 26 (25.24%) is of the opinion that practical training should be realized within the existing number of (three) lessons a week, whereas 4 students (3.88%) fi nd that the sufficient amount of practical instruction should comprise 2 (two) lessons or 1(one) lesson a week.
Besides the three lessons of practical instruction, the SPE course also includes one lecture per week.The purpose of this lecture is to introduce students to the theoretical foundations of the subject and other contents of the curriculum.When the students' attitudes regarding the theoretical part of the subject are concerned (Table 4) it is obvious that they signifi cantly differ from their attitudes regarding the practical SPE instruction.In response to this question, 4 (four) respondents (3.88%) were of the opinion that the number of theoretical lessons is too large, whereas 60 students (58.25%) found that the existing number of theoretical lessons was satisfactory.The number of theoretical lessons was perceived as insuffi cient by 22 students (21.36%), whereas as many as 17 respondents (16.50%) had no attitude regarding this question.In the process of reconciling the curricula at the Academy of Criminalistic and Police Studies with the Bologna Declaration, the curricular contents of the SPE courses were redistributed so as to concentrate each SPE course in one term, unlike the practice the training models and the importance of continuous instruction in SPE, which can clearly be deduced from the results shown in Table 5.As many as 89 or 86.41% subjects answered that they were in favour of two-term SPE courses, i.e. the courses that would last an entire academic year, 11 or 10.68% were in favor of the existing model of instruction, whereas 3 subjects had not attitude regarding the distribution of the subject across semesters.
As a teaching discipline, SPE developed from Physical Education as a social science studying the laws governing motorics, that is the area which generally studies the processes of locomotion from the aspects of movement, control, and management with respect to main physical features of people.Being an area of narrow specialization, SPE studies laws which govern the motoric space, i.e., with respect to locomotor structures which are necessary for the professional needs of police, as well as the laws of education with respect to the mentioned police education.This subject is divided into the following segments: theoretical instruction, special part (training in the gym) which comprises techniques partly taken from martial arts (throws, strikes, levers, etc.) and adjusted to specifi c professional needs of police work, swimming instruction, skiing instruction, and basic motoric status BMS, the purpose of which is to improve and maintain the levels of general and specifi c physical abilities and motoric knowledge and skills.The respondents also answered a question regarding the parts of the curriculum they liked best and 90 or 87.38% said they preferred the instruction in the gymnasium, 2 or 1.94% stated they liked swimming and the same number favored BMS, 1 or 0.97 voted for skiing, none for theoretical lessons, whereas 8 or 7.77% had no attitude regarding the contents of the curricula (Table 6).In order to create a clear picture about the listed attitudes, it should be pointed out that the respondents had not completed either the swimming and skiing instruction or BMS, but, in all probability, based the attitudes on the theoretical (Amanović, Jovanović, & Mudrić, 1999).7).The reason for the smallest percentage of those in favor of strikes and blocks probably lies in the fact that these elements are practiced "virtually", which is not the case with the techniques of throwing and levers (Gužvica, 2004) or some other specifi c professional techniques and skills (Arlov, 2006).
Since the special part of SPE comprises a number of techniques of throws, levers, strikes and blocs, as well as combinations of basic techniques, one of the questions asked what segments of the special course the respondents liked best.Out of 103 respondents, 20 or 19.42% said the part of special course they favored throws, 15 or 14.56% preferred strikes and blocks, 34 or 33.01%levers, and 26 or When the obtained results are observed with respect to the expected outcome of the contents of SPE (Table 8), 49.51% or 51 respondents found that the educational goals are achieved in keeping with the expectations (42.72%) or exceeding the expectations (6.80%).Table 8 suggests a conclusion that 46.60% or 48 respondents were of the attitude that the SPE instruction had failed to fulfi ll their expectations (37.86%), that is, they expressed disappointment with what they had learned in the SPE course.It is quite within our expectations that a number of students may be disappointed, since their motives for studying differ as well as their anticipation of the realistic educational goals (which depend, primarily, on the given curricula) in relation to what they individually and subjectively expect (Whetstone et al., 2004;Haarr, 2005).The theoretical instruction provides the students with a brief history of SPE within the MI (Blagojević et al., 2008) and introduces them to previous concepts of SPE (lessons spread across all semesters, swimming, skiing, fi tness...) and if the previously mentioned attitudes of the students concerning SPE training are observed (Tables 1 to 5) it can be concluded that the most probable causes of dissatisfaction lie in the small number of lessons, elimination of certain curricular activities, harmonizing the curriculum with the Bologna Declaration, etc.As regards the students' attitudes related to the effects expected from SPE, a conclusion can be drawn that 49.51% had achieved more than or as much as they had expected, whereas the expectations were not fulfi lled with 46.60% of the respondents.A large number of respondents (46.60%) were of the opinion that their SPE teachers and associates in this subject were exceptionally correct or correct, while the prevalent feeling among 19 of them (18.45%) was that their conduct was incorrect or disappointing.
On the basis of the results obtained in the research, the conclusion is that the students' attitudes clearly indicate that the curricula of SPE courses at the Academy and elsewhere should be designed so as distribute the course across two terms, increasing, at the same time, the number of practical instruction lessons, while retaining the theoretical lesson.The increased number of lessons should incorporate resuming the swimming and skiing instruction, as well as fi eld training in both summer and winter conditions, as well as fi tness training (Milojković, Dopsaj The questionnaire also included the respondents' attitudes regarding the conduct of teachers and associates responsible for SPE during examinations (Table 9).The obtained results suggest that 48 of them or 46.60% were of the opinion that the teachers and associates were exceptionally correct (14.56%) or correct (32.04%), whereas 19 of them or 18.45% found that their conduct was incorrect or disappoint-ing (5.83%, 12.62%, respectively).An exceptionally large number of respondents had no attitude, 36 or 34.95%, can probably be explained by the fact that they had not taken the exam, but only passed their pre-exam obligations which are clearly assigned in advance and do not depend on teachers or associates since they involve testing physical abilities.

CONCLUSION
Following the realization of the pre-exam tasks, 103 students of the Academy of Criminalistic and Police Studies were asked to fi ll in a questionnaire in an opinion poll focusing on the prevalent attitudes regarding the instruction in SPE.The analysis of the results obtained in the poll indicate that a large number of respondents shared the opinion that SPE as a subject is an exceptionally signifi cant or belongs to the group of more signifi cant subjects (94.17%), that the number of lessons of practical training is insuffi cient or average (82.52%) and that this number should be increased to 4 (39.81%) or 5 (31.07%) lessons a week.
The respondents' attitude that the number of theoretical lessons is satisfactory (58.25%) is also of great importance, as well as the one that the instruction should cover the entire academic year, i.e. both the winter and summer terms (86.41%).The curricular activities within SPE that student appeared to like best were related to special part (strikes, levers, throws, and the like) (87.38%), whereas the theoretical part was least favored; the most popular segments of the special part appeared to be lever techniques tudes would most probably be infl uenced in a favourable way if these changes were to be introduced and the attitude regarding the expectations from SPE would change for the better.
Radovanović, & Jovanović, 2008).The realization of practical training in the special part, which includes strikes and blocks, practicing in pairs would bring about more favourable effects.The students' atti-

Table 1 .
Students' attitudes regarding the signifi cance of SPE as a subject

Table 2 .
Students' attitudes regarding the amount of practical SPE training tinuity and the model of continuous learning has been compromised.The theoretical and practical lessons, however, managed to raise the students' awareness of

Table 3 .
Students' attitudes regarding the need for practical SPE training

Table 4 .
Students' attitudes regarding the amount of theoretical instruction in SPE

Table 5 .
Students' attitudes regarding the distribution of SPE instruction across semesters

Table 6 .
Students' attitudes regarding the SPE curriculum contents

Table 7 .
Students' attitudes regarding the curriculum contents of the special part of SPE

Table 9 .
Students' attitudes regarding the SPE teachers' conduct during exams