The Dreyfus Model of Skill Acquisition
In 1980 American philosopher, Hubert Dreyfus, and his younger brother, Stuart Dreyfus, developed the Dreyfus Model of Skill Acquisition. Their model was based upon the concept that students pass through five levels of competency as they acquire specific skills through formal education and practice. Below you can see the five sequential levels of proficiency.
According to the Dreyfus Model of Skill Acquisition, a novice individual strictly adheres to given rules without any context. As an individual develops a sense of competence, he or she begins to assess relevant skills and rules that are specific to a situation's context. While competency is characterized by an individual's decision making process, proficiency is guided by a sense of intuition with decision making. Progressing from rigid adherence of rules to intuitive decision making in the Dreyfus Model is dependent upon an accumulation of tacit knowledge over long periods of time.
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Click on the Dreyfus Model to access and view a short slideshow.
Then, click below to download and print the documents for your clinical preceptor toolbox. These files will serve as reference tools until you are able to confidently identify characteristics and needs of individuals at each level.
five_levels_of_proficiency.pdf | |
File Size: | 60 kb |
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dreyfus_model_of_skill_acquisition.pdf | |
File Size: | 86 kb |
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In the short video clip to the right, the Dreyfus brothers share with the audience a few thoughts on skill acquisition, perspective, and proficiency.
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From Novice to Expert Theory
As you can see from the descriptions to the right, Dr. Benner's Novice to Expert Theory utilizes the Dreyfus Model's five levels of competency.
Novice In Benner's (1982, 2004) articles she describes novices as beginners without situational experiences. Novice individuals lack the ability to use discretionary judgement so they instead utilize context-free rules, or absolute truths, in order to make decisions. The problem with this type of guided decision making is that the rules cannot delineate task relevancy or rule exceptions, limiting students to make inflexible decisions. Typically novices are seen in first year program students.
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Advanced Beginner
An individual that has progressed to the advanced beginner stage is capable of using prior situational experiences as guidelines for action. However, advanced beginners cannot yet distinguish between important and unimportant information. These individuals also begin to pay closer attention to the clinical practice of others and are increasingly aware of and susceptible to feedback.
- The advanced beginner athletic training student is capable of performing a very thorough injury evaluation. They will ask every history question, test every muscle group, perform every special test, but will become overwhelmed with the information and struggle to come to a single plausible diagnosis.
Competent
Competent individuals, typically having completed 2-3 years of clinical experience up to 1-2 years of clinical practice, are characterized by the ability to dissect out important and irrelevant information and then come to a conclusion that takes into account the long-term goals of their decisions. Competent individuals still have not developed the speed and flexibility that a proficient individual has, but there is a sense of mastery and salience with various situations.
- Both athletic training students and recent graduates can be found at this level of competency. Competent athletic trainers are able to more efficiently determine a diagnosis and discuss a variety of treatment options while predicting the relative timelines of recovery for each.
Proficiency
With continued practice, an individual will become proficient in their domain. Proficient individuals have a large experience base that allows them to recognize whole situations and predict the events that might unfold with any given situation, modifying their decisions based upon these predictions. Proficient individuals must have a deep understanding of a situation before maxims, or general truths, may be used to guide their decision making processes. The proficiency level of the Novice to Expert Theory can be thought of as a transitional phase to the expert level.
- A proficient athletic trainer understands that each injury is contextual, it depends upon the situation at hand. He or she knows that an athlete with a torn medial meniscus might require a surgical meniscus repair or a meniscectomy, depending on the amount of damage, and that the recovery timeline will be different, depending on the type of surgery.
Expert
At the expert level individuals no longer rely on a rule, guideline, or maxim to analyze a situation and decide upon the appropriate course of action. Instead, experts rely on the intuition or practical wisdom that results from many years of experience. Often times it is hard for those with far less expertise to comprehend an expert's verbal descriptions because the expert functions on deep understandings of various situations.
- The expert athletic trainer uses the intuition that he or she has built up from prior experiences for clinical judgement (e.g., "just knowing" when a bone is broken).
Click below to download and print the document for your clinical preceptor toolbox. It provides specific clinical preceptor implications for education at different clinical expertise levels.
preceptor_novice_to_expert_chart.pdf | |
File Size: | 712 kb |
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In the short video clip to the left, Dr. Benner discusses situated coaching to teach skill acquisition in practiced disciplines. |
With everything that you have just read in mind, is important to remember that Dr. Benner's theory is based upon a few assumptions:
1. Experience is a prerequisite of expertise
2. Expertise can only develop when skills are formed and tested in actual practice settings
3. The levels of proficiency represent a linear model where one level builds upon the last level
Also keep in mind that while most of the pre-licensure athletic training students you are educating will fall between the novice and competent levels, you should also be aware that the young professionals you may work with at your institution are continuing to develop expertise as well. Therefore, you may also find yourself assisting these young professionals as they strive to become expert athletic trainers.
1. Experience is a prerequisite of expertise
2. Expertise can only develop when skills are formed and tested in actual practice settings
3. The levels of proficiency represent a linear model where one level builds upon the last level
Also keep in mind that while most of the pre-licensure athletic training students you are educating will fall between the novice and competent levels, you should also be aware that the young professionals you may work with at your institution are continuing to develop expertise as well. Therefore, you may also find yourself assisting these young professionals as they strive to become expert athletic trainers.
The Critics
Those who criticize or debate Benner's theory, typically do so because they believe that her theory is too simple for the complex phenomena that research on expert intuition has uncovered and because the theory is not validated by quantitative research (Cash, 1995; English, 1993). The terms expertise and intuition are not operationally defined; the two terms having only been phenomenologically described. To these critics, defining expertise by the use of intuition is too broad. Gobet and Chassy (2006) have even went so far as to suggest an alternative framework that better understands intuition's role in expertise.
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