Bringing the field into the criminal justice classroom: Field trips, ride-alongs, and guest speakers

Educators in a number of disciplines rely on field strategies to show their students how to apply concepts they have learned in their coursework. Very little guidance has been provided to criminal justice educators on ways to successfully bring the field into their classroom. Three strategies for bringing “the real world” into criminal justice courses include field trips, police ride-alongs, and the use of guest speakers. Using our experiences and ideas from the educational literature, this paper addresses the use of each method and suggests a number of strategies to make these field experiences pedagogically successful in criminal justice courses.

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