Nursing theories

Dreyfus Model (Skill Model)

Hubert L. Dreyfus & Stuart E. Dreyfus (1980)

Key points

• Dreyfus' ideas are based on phenomenology. In acquiring a skill by means of instruction and experience, the student normally passes through five (six) developmental stages which we designate novice, advanced beginner, competence, proficiency, expertise, and mastery.³
• Dreyfus says a phenomenology of skill acquisition confirms that, as one acquires expertise, the acquired know-how is experienced as finer and finer discriminations of situations paired with the appropriate response to each.⁴
• Individuals progress through various levels in their acquisition of skills and subsumes ideas with regard to how individuals learn.⁵
• Novice -  a non-situational relationship of the problem with the decomposed memory of the solution is presented, using as a standard analytical decision making, knowing how to identify and use rules and patterns not being able to deal with complex tasks, requiring the professional to supervise throughout the process.^6,7
• Beginner - connect rules with common aspects of the plan where he perceives tasks as a series of steps and are able to partially handle complex problem-solving in a supervised manner.⁸
• Competent -  the individual is able to act on complex problems using analytics, plans, and the test-and-learn mechanism by feeding back the plan, except for non-routine tasks.
• Proficient - the capabilities of professionals to make decisions through intuitive aspects, taking into account previous experiences and patterns without breaking them down.
• Expert - people use intuition as empirical evidence for solving complex problems, moving between intuition and analysis in a natural way, reaching excellent levels of performance.⁶
• Mastery - a pattern to perform as a reflection for others, most of the time creating performance standards.⁹

References

1. Cappuccio, M. L. Dreyfus is right: knowledge-that limits your skill. Synthese 202, 85 (2023).
2. Dreyfus, H. L. Intelligence without representation – Merleau-Ponty’s critique of mental representation The relevance of phenomenology to scientific explanation. Phenomenol. Cogn. Sci. 1, 367–383 (2002).
3.  Dreyfus, S. E. & Dreyfus, H. L. A Five-Stage Model of the Mental Activities Involved in Directed Skill Acquisition: http://www.dtic.mil/docs/citations/ADA084551 (1980) doi:10.21236/ADA084551.
4. Dreyfus, H. L. Intelligence without representation – Merleau-Ponty’s critique of mental representation The relevance of phenomenology to scientific explanation. Phenomenol. Cogn. Sci. 1, 367–383 (2002).
5. Peña, A. The Dreyfus model of clinical problem-solving skills acquisition: a critical perspective. Med. Educ. Online 15, 10.3402/meo.v15i0.4846 (2010).
6. Luiz Neto, A., da Silva, L. F. & Penha, R. Sandbox of Competence: A Conceptual Model for Assessing Professional Competence. Adm. Sci. 12, 182 (2022).
7. Benner, P., Tanner, C. & Chesla, C. From beginner to expert: Gaining a differentiated clinical world in critical care nursing. Adv. Nurs. Sci. 14, 13 (1992).
8. Khan, K. & Ramachandran, S. Conceptual framework for performance assessment: Competency, competence and performance in the context of assessments in healthcare – Deciphering the terminology. Med. Teach. 34, 920–928 (2012).
9. Chaffin, C. R. & Cummings, B. F. Application of the Dreyfus Model of Skill Acquisition to Financial Planning. | Journal of Financial Service Professionals | EBSCOhost. vol. 66 53 https://openurl.ebsco.com/contentitem/gcd:83233389?sid=ebsco:plink:crawler&id=ebsco:gcd:83233389 (2012).