Dr.
Davis will contact you to schedule a 30-45 minute
meeting to review the questionnaire and begin to
craft an Individual Professional Development Program
Plan (IPDP).
Stuart E. Dreyfus, an applied
mathematician, and Hubert L. Dreyfus, a
philosopher, developed a model of skill
acquisition based on the study of chess players,
air force pilots, and army tank drivers and
commanders (S. E. Dreyfus, 1982; H. L. Dreyfus &
Dreyfus, 1977, 1986; S. E. Dreyfus & Dreyfus,
1979, 1980).
Dreyfus claims that following
rules, as is done by expert systems is not
enough. It can't capture the richness, the
``thickness'' of human experience. Part of the
Dreyfus' argument is based on their five-stage
model of progress from novice to expert
describing skill acquisition:
Novice
Advanced beginner
Competent
Proficient
Expert
These levels are described in Michael Eraut’s
book, Developing Professional Knowledge and
Competence.
Novice (Level #1): Operates by
consciously-learnt context-free rules. Lacks
any sense of the overall task.
Rigid adherence to taught rules or
plans
Little situational perception
No discretionary judgment
Advanced Beginner (Level #2): Uses
more sophisticated rules, which refer to
situational elements as well as context-free
ones. These situational elements are
features such as the pattern of behavior
which distinguishes a drunken from a sober
driver. They're learnt by experience, and
the advanced beginner can't formalize them.
Guidelines for action are based on
attributes or aspects. (Aspects are
global characteristics of situations
that can be recognized only after some
prior experience)
Situational perception is still
limited
All attributes and aspects are
treated separately and given equal
importance.
Competent (Level #3): Has now
learnt to recognize many context-free and
situational elements. Still lacks any sense
of their overall importance to the task, and
rapidly becomes overwhelmed. Tries to
overcome this by hierarchical goal-based
planning. This hierarchical decomposition of
the task means that, at any time, the
competent pays attention only to that small
number of features relevant to a particular
sub-goal, thus avoiding being overwhelmed.
Coping with crowdedness
Now sees actions at least partially
in terms of longer-term goals
Conscious deliberate planning
Standardized and routinized
procedures
Proficient (Level #4): Most of the
time, now performs task(s) intuitively,
without analytical thought. But this deep
involvement in the task will be broken when
certain elements present themselves as
particularly important. The proficient then
stops and thinks analytically about what to
do next.
See situations holistically rather
than in terms of aspects
See what is most important in a
situation
Perceives deviations from the normal
pattern
Decision-making is less labored
Uses maxims for guidance, whose
meaning varies according to the
situation (maxim = expression of a truth
or principle).
Expert (Level #5): Performs his
task intuitively, almost all the time.
Occasionally has to stop and deliberate, but
this involves critical reflection on his
intuitions, rather than goal-based planning.
No longer relies on rules,
guidelines or maxims
Intuitive grasp of situations based
on deep tacit understanding
Analytic approaches are only used in
novel situation or when a problem occurs
Vision of what is possible
A level #6 master has been characterized
by Paul Batalden as “loves surprises!”
So this is a progression from rule-based
problem-solving to a different approach
based on matching against past experiences.
The first is similar to classical symbolic
AI, which divides problems down into bits,
divides the job between different
components, and puts the results together.
The second involves some kind of holistic
pattern recognition.
Classical AI assumes the mind also
divides problems down into bits, divides the
job between different components, and puts
the results together. Hence it's not a good
model for expert performance. Digital
computers require one to organize tasks in
this way: hence they can't achieve expert
performance. What is required for holistic
pattern recognition is something like a
holographic recognizer.
Ohio University
College of Osteopathic Medicine
218 Grosvenor Hall, Athens, Ohio 45701 740-593-2190
