Four Stages of Driving
Many people are unaware that there are four stages of learning to, among others, drive a car and they ask me why I get so technical in teaching people to drive, in their opinion. Fact is, learning to drive is 95% psychological and only 5% technical. I think you’ll agree that if I show you how to do a procedure and you can do it correctly once, you have the technical knowledge to repeat the procedure, right? Truth of the matter is that 4 distinct learning stages stand between you and learning to drive, but I’ll explain further down the page. All of what you’ll read here I experience on a daily basis with clients on driving lessons.
“We are told about the world before we see it. We imagine most things before we experience them. and those preconceptions, unless education has made us acutely aware, govern deeply the whole process of perception. They mark out certain objects as familiar or strange, emphasizing the difference, so that the slightly familiar is seen as very familiar and the somewhat strange as sharply alien …”
~ Walter Lippmann Public Opinion NY, Macmillan, 1922
So what happened to just toughing it out till you get the “knack of it”? Impatient, are we?
Being a Whole Brain Practitioner has stood me in very good stead in dealing with clients’ thinking and hence I also favour a bit of Gestalt which concentrates on the way in which your mind insists on finding patterns in things, and how this contributes to learning, especially your development of “insight”. No I’m not a therapist and neither am I practicing medicine – I simply use knowledge of varied disciplines to explain and help you make sense of how and what you are learning to try and get you to the “knack of it” as quickly as possible.
A “knack” is a psychomotor equivalent of cognitive “insight” (“getting it”, in other words). Here you have x=time and y=skill as an illustration of the learning curve which is like a single step once you get the knack of what you’re doing. Permanent learning takes place within moments and although it may seem like it takes forever to get to this stage, you need to bear in mind that you are busy going through a 4-Stage learning process, albeit only part of what will be influencing you on your journey.
Betty, the Crow, is perhaps not learning to drive but she perfectly illustrates the learning element by her amazing ability to repeat the action later, without apparently having to pause and think about it as she did the first time. That, in essence, is exactly what you will be able to do during training; to get “the knack” of the problem-solving capacity you need for driving.
Now here’s what I’m on about…
The Conscious Competence Model (Originally by former employee, Noel Burch in the 1970′s at Dr Thomas Gordon’s US Gordon Training International, although Confucius and Socrates are cited as possible earliest originators) explains the process and stages of learning a new skill (or behaviour, ability, technique, etc.); a simple explanation of how we learn, and a useful reminder why I recognise your need to be trained in stages.
FACT: You will only respond to training when you are aware of your own need for it, and the personal benefit you will derive from achieving it.
FACT: You will not be able to address achieving conscious competence until you’ve become consciously and fully aware of your own incompetence. This is a primary reason of driver training failure and why many people jump around between driving schools, blame driving instructors, and complain about “not learning anything”.
FACT: Owing to the fact that we each have natural strengths and preferences, we find progression to stage 3, and markedly so stage 4, easier in various skills, like driving. Some of us actually resist moving to stage 3 and, not only is it counter-productive to try and force learning at this deadlock, but it also is unfair and very frustrating for both the learner driver and driving instructor when this resistance becomes apparent, persists or compliance to unreasonable results are expected.
FACT: You ALWAYS begin at Stage 1 – Unconscious Incompetence, and end at Stage 4 – Conscious Competence. For an advanced skill such as driving, if you don’t keep up practice of your new skill, you may even regress to previous stages, markedly so from 4 to 3, or 3 to 2. If you have regressed from 4, back to any prior stage you will need to re-develop, in sequence, to achieve stage 4 – Unconscious Competence again.
FACT: NO, there are no short-cuts, no matter HOW impatient you are, no matter HOW late you left it to start the process, no matter HOW urgent your crisis currently is!
Stage 1 – Unconscious Incompetence
Practical Example: You are 10 years old and unaware about driving skills since your parents do all the driving everywhere (I call it Passenger Syndrome, among teens, that is), driving skill doesn’t feature in your life and thus driving competency does not raise any concerns for you.
- you are not aware of the existence or relevance of the skill area
- your are not aware that you have a particular deficiency in the area concerned
- you might deny the relevance or usefulness of the new skill
- you must become conscious of your incompetence before development of the new skill or learning can begin
- your, and your driving instructor’s aim is to move you into the ‘conscious competence’ stage, by demonstrating the skill or ability and the benefit that it will bring to your effectiveness
Stage 2 – Conscious Incompetence
Practical Example: You are a teenager with high-hopes of taking your “significant other” out on a date in your own car…But you need a driver’s license in order to do that. You get into your mom’s car in the driveway with the intention to park it in the garage, doing mom a favour. The car surges ahead unexpectedly and when you finally find the brake, heart pounding, you nearly put yourself through the windscreen when stopping. “I thought it would be easier…OK, so I’ll practice a lot” you say to yourself. You are now consciously aware that you are unskilled at driving and are fortunate to have excellent motivation for practice.
- you become aware of the existence and relevance of the skill
- you are therefore also aware of your deficiency in this area, ideally by attempting or trying to use the skill
- you realise that by improving your skill or ability in this area your effectiveness will improve
- ideally you have a measure of the extent of your deficiency in the relevant skill, and a measure of what level of skill is required for your own competence
- you ideally make a commitment to learn and practice the new skill, and to move to the ‘conscious competence’ stage
Stage 3 – Conscious Competence
Practical Example: Quite nervous, you take your driver’s test. Fortunately you practiced diligently for many hours and this is why you pass your test. You are now a competent driver, but you still need to consciously focus on training received during your driving lessons and apply that knowledge when you’re driving.
- you achieve ‘conscious competence’ in a skill when you can perform it reliably at will
- you will need to concentrate and think in order to perform the skill
- you can perform the skill without assistance
- you will not reliably perform the skill unless thinking about it – the skill is not yet ‘second nature’ or ‘automatic’
- you should be able to demonstrate the skill to another, but unlikely to be able to teach it well to another person
- you should ideally continue to practise the new skill, and if appropriate commit to becoming ‘unconsciously competent’ at the new skill
- PRACTICE is the single-most effective way to move from stage 3 to 4
Stage 4 – Unconscious Competence
Practical Example: As you become older and clock more driving hours you become a real driving multi-tasker, being able to “simultaneously” split your attention between the radio station, following a conversation, noticing the pretty girl across the road…and more. You are now so practiced at driving that you no longer need to focus on driving specifically to perform the skill proficiently, yet knowing that accidents are best avoided.
- the skill becomes so practised that it enters the unconscious parts of the brain – it becomes ‘second nature’
- common examples are driving, sports activities, typing, manual dexterity tasks, listening and communicating
- it becomes possible for certain skills to be performed while doing something else, for example, knitting while reading a book
- you might now be able to teach others in the skill concerned, although after some time of being unconsciously competent you might actually have difficulty in explaining exactly how you do it – the skill has become largely instinctual
- this arguably gives rise to the need for long-standing unconscious competence to be checked periodically against new standards
‘The greatest obstacle to discovery is not ignorance, it is the illusion of knowledge’ ~ Daniel J. Boorstin
Doing a driver’s test before you have reached at least Stage 3 you can expect up to a 90% chance of failure.
Food for thought I would imagine?
We got work to do – See you in my driver’s seat!!
Sources: http://www.learningandteaching.info and http://www.businessballs.com
