Abstract
Stuart and Hubert Dreyfus studied how airline pilots and chess players improve. With experience, what changed was how people read a situation as much as how much they knew. A novice follows rules without much sense of context. An expert sees what the situation needs and does it, often without being able to explain why.
The model's practical use is that each stage needs different help. A novice needs clear rules and somewhere safe to practise. A proficient person needs lots of varied cases and someone to compare judgement with. Hand an expert a beginner's checklist, or give a novice a vague principle, and both of them slow down.
Method
- 01
Pick one skill
Stages describe a skill, so you can be an expert at one thing and a novice at the next.
- 02
Answer the questions
Rate how much you rely on rules, and how often you act on intuition.
- 03
Find your stage
Novice, advanced beginner, competent, proficient or expert.
- 04
See what helps
Each stage learns from something different. Novices need rules, and experts need hard problems.
- 05
Plan your practice
Pick two or three kinds of practice that suit your stage, and set a date to check again.
When to use it
- You've stopped improving at something and more practice isn't helping.
- You're mentoring someone and want to know what kind of help they need.
- You're designing training for people at different levels.
Common pitfalls
- Rating yourself on a whole job instead of one specific skill.
- Assuming a higher stage is always better. Pilots at every level still use checklists in emergencies.
- Giving everyone the same training. What helps a novice tends to bore someone who's proficient.
- Confusing years of experience with stage. Repeating the same work without feedback can keep you at competent for decades.
Origin and references
Attributed to Stuart E. Dreyfus and Hubert L. Dreyfus (1980).
- Dreyfus, S. E., & Dreyfus, H. L. (1980). A Five-Stage Model of the Mental Activities Involved in Directed Skill Acquisition. Operations Research Center, University of California, Berkeley.
- Dreyfus, H. L., & Dreyfus, S. E. (1986). Mind over Machine. Free Press.
- Benner, P. (1984). From Novice to Expert: Excellence and Power in Clinical Nursing Practice. Addison-Wesley.