1/3/23, 10:13 AM The Stages of Learning: How You Become More Competent at Skills – Effectiviology

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The Stages of Learning: How You

Become More Competent at Skills

The stages of learning model is a psychological framework which explains

how people become more competent when learning a skill. According to
this model, as people learn a skill, they advance up a hierarchy of
competence, which includes four main levels of competence: unconscious
incompetence, conscious incompetence, conscious competence, and
unconscious competence.

Each of these stages of learning involves a different set of behaviors and

abilities. For example, the ‘unconscious incompetence’ stage usually

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involves making many simple mistakes without being aware that you’re
making them, while the ‘conscious incompetence’ stage usually involves
making many of the same mistakes as in the previous stage, but this time
while being aware that you’re making them, which allows you to account
for them better.

Understanding the stages-of-learning model can be highly beneficial, for a

number of reasons. For example, understanding this model can help you
understand why the beginning of the learning process often feels
frustrating, help you identify your position in the learning process, help you
predict your future progress, and help you figure out what you should be
focusing on in your learning at the present moment.

As such, in the following article you will learn more about the stages of
learning model, see what each level of competence in this model entails,
and understand how you can implement this knowledge in practice.

Contents
1. The stages of learning and levels of competence
2. Accounting for the stages of learning
2.1. Understand why the beginning is so hard
2.2. Understand why you sometimes feel like you’re getting worse
2.3. Different subskills can be at different levels of competence
2.4. Give people feedback based on their stage of learning
2.5. Final words on the stages of learning
3. Related concepts
3.1. How you become more competent
3.2. The potential fifth level of competence
3.3. The history of the stages of learning
4. Summary and conclusions

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1/3/23, 10:13 AM The Stages of Learning: How You Become More Competent at Skills – Effectiviology

The stages of learning and levels of

competence
Research on the topic of human learning identifies four main stages of
learning during the acquisition of skills, each of which represents a
different level in the hierarchy of competence:

Unconscious incompetence. Unconscious incompetence is the beginner

stage of learning, which you start at when you first start practicing a new
skill that you want to learn. This stage is characterized by the fact that
you don’t know what you don’t know. As such, you’re not entirely aware
of what the new skill entails, and you’re not exactly sure what your goals
should be, meaning that you end up making a lot of mistakes, without
realizing that you’re making them.
Conscious incompetence. Conscious incompetence is the intermediate
stage of learning, which you reach after developing some familiarity with
the new skill that you’re learning. At this stage, there’s still a lot that you
don’t know, but you can now recognize what you don’t know, and what
you need to learn in order to improve. As such, you still make a lot of
mistakes, but now you’re at least aware that you’re making them.
Conscious competence. Conscious competence is the proficient stage of
learning, which you reach after you develop a strong proficiency at the
skill that you’re learning. At this stage, you already have a good grasp of
the skill and of what it entails, so that you make only a small amount of
mistakes while practicing. However, performing at a high level still
requires a significant and conscious effort on your part, and a lot of
things that the skill entails still aren’t intuitive to you.
Unconscious competence. Unconscious competence is the mastery stage
of learning, which you reach once you develop a very high level of
proficiency in the skill. At this stage, you make very few mistakes, and
have an in-depth understanding of the skill and of what it entails. The
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biggest difference between this stage and the previous one is that
performing at a high level is now much more intuitive, and no longer
requires as much conscious effort on your part.

These stages are often mentioned in various discussions of learning theory,

as it relates to various topics, ranging from sports, to music, to language
learning, and so on.

Accounting for the stages of learning

The main benefit of understanding the concept of the stages of learning is
that it gives you a better understanding of how your learning process
works when you’re acquiring a new skill. This is valuable, because it can
help you identify the stage that you’re at, which will allow you to figure out
what your biggest weaknesses are, and where you need to improve,
without feeling discouraged.

In the sections below, you will read about a few specific areas where you
can implement your understanding of this learning theory, together with a
few additional pieces of advice which will help you implement this
knowledge as effectively as possible.

Understand why the beginning is so hard

As we saw earlier, the first stage of learning a new skill is the unconscious
incompetence stage, where you essentially have no idea what you’re doing,
or what you need to focus on. While this stage is inherently frustrating, it’s
also a completely natural part of the learning process.

It’s important to understand this, since a lot of people assume that the fact
that they struggle at first means that they have no chance of successfully

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learning the new skill that they want to get better at. By realizing that this
initial struggle is perfectly natural, you should be able to stay motivated,
and keep working until you manage to successfully improve your abilities.

Understand why you sometimes feel like you’re

getting worse
Sometimes, when you practice a skill that you’re trying to improve, you
might feel like you’re actually getting worse over time, instead of better. A
common reason why this happens is that you’ve advanced from the first
stage of learning, unconscious incompetence, to the second stage, conscious
incompetence.

This means that you might start feeling like you’re suddenly making a lot of
mistakes. In reality, however, you were likely already making those same
mistakes beforehand. The difference is that you’re now good enough to
actually realize when you’re making those mistakes, whereas earlier you
simply didn’t have the necessary proficiency which is required in order to
be able to notice it.

Note that there are other reasons why, as your proficiency improves, you
might feel like you’re getting worse, such as the fact that the more you
know, the more factors you have to consider.

For example, if you are playing a sport where at first you only have to think
about your offensive abilities, then advancing to a stage where you also
have to start taking defense into account is likely going to reduce your
overall performance in the short term, since you’re now paying attention to
a lot more things at the same time.

While this might make you feel like you’re getting worse, since your
performance on specific tasks is going to be worse in the short term, in

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reality this change in performance signifies your growing competence, and

your newfound ability to understand the skill on a deeper level.

Different subskills can be at different levels of

competence
When you’re developing a skill, it’s perfectly natural for the different
subskills that it contains to be at different stages, in terms of competence.

For example, if you’re learning a new language, it’s possible that your
reading will be at a higher level than your writing, or that you’ll be better at
understanding what people are saying compared to saying those things
yourself.

This variability is something that you should normally expect to see it in

your learning process. If you notice that this happening, don’t let it
frustrate you, and simply keep working on your weaker subskills until you
get them up to the level that you want them to be at.

Give people feedback based on their stage of

learning
Understanding the stages of learning can also help you give more effective
feedback to other people when you’re trying to help them learn a new skill,
because it allows you to tailor your feedback to their proficiency level.

Specifically, people at different levels of competence are going to benefit

more from different types of feedback.

For example, during the earlier stages of acquisition people are generally
less capable of handling large amounts of feedback, or feedback that is too
complex, because they simply don’t have the necessary abilities in order to

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deal with such feedback. Conversely, at the higher levels of competence,

people are often going to want to get specific technical details, that will
help them build upon the basic skills that they have already acquired.

Overall, there isn’t a single method for giving feedback that will apply to
everyone. Rather, the important thing is to assess people’s proficiency
level, and to take it into account when giving them feedback, so that they
can receive the feedback that will benefit them the most.

Final words on the stages of learning

The psychological model of learning that you saw here is meant to give you
a rough idea of the stages that people go through as they learn a skill. You
can benefit from understanding this model in various ways, such as by
being able to figure out where you are in the learning process and what you
can do to improve.

The most important thing to remember from this model is that feeling like
you have no idea what you’re doing in the beginning is perfectly fine. When
you eventually start realizing that you’re making tons of mistakes, that’s
not a bad thing either. Instead, these are both predictable and necessary
stages of learning, that you go through as you slowly improve your abilities.

Related concepts
How you become more competent
You become more competent at your target skill by practicing and
engaging with relevant material. For example, this could involve reading
about the skill, practicing it, or teaching parts of it to others.

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You might have to use different techniques or different versions of the

same techniques when trying to improve different skills. For example,
when it comes to learning a sport, you could benefit from going over
relevant motions, but the same technique will generally be less effective
when it comes to learning a skill such as programming.

However, the basic principle is the same regardless of what your target skill
is: if you want to become more proficient, you have to practice and learn,
whether your target skill is a sport, such as basketball or dancing, an art,
such as drawing or playing the guitar, or something else entirely, such as
writing or sewing.

Note that some factors will affect the degree to which the learning process
will cause you to improve your competence. These factors include your
natural abilities, the amount of time and effort that you put into learning,
and the optimization of your learning process.

Since you can’t control your natural abilities, if you want to become more
competent at a skill you will have to focus on making sure that you put in
enough time and effort, while also optimizing your learning process as
much as possible. This optimization can involve, for example, using learning
techniques such as interleaving or knowledge-building, which allow you to
learn and practice your skills more effectively.

The potential fifth level of competence

Some researchers propose the existence of a fifth level of competence,
called unconscious supercompetence. This stage is similar to the fourth level
of competence (unconscious competence), but signifies a higher and more
effortless level of competence, where the practitioner is aware of their
ability to perform the skill easily and without conscious effort.

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In general, this stage of learning is less clearly defined than the other
stages, and is less commonly referenced in the research literature on the
topic.

However, the possible distinction between this stage and the fourth one
isn’t crucial for most people learning a skill, since this stage signifies the
highest level of competence possible, and as such applies only to relatively
few people, who are already strongly familiar with the skill that they are
learning.

The history of the stages of learning

This theory of learning is attributed to different people in the various
sources that mention it. Some studies attribute it to Abraham Maslow, who
developed the hierarchy of needs, while other studies attribute it to various
other people, the most notable of which is William S. Howell, whose 1982
book is cited as a resource in a large number of research papers on the
topic.

One possibility for why the source of this theory is unclear, is that several
people came up with similar conceptualizations of this model
independently from one another, around the same time. Nevertheless, the
question of who came up with this model first is not crucial for most people,
as it doesn’t have any effect on how the theory is applied today.

Summary and conclusions

When you work on improving in a certain skill you go through several
stages of learning, each of which signifies a different level of
competence.

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The first stage is unconscious incompetence, where you don’t know much,
and you’re also not sure what you don’t know. The stage after that is
conscious incompetence, where you still struggle, but where you can start
identifying what you need to do in order to improve. Next is the stage of
conscious competence, where you’re fairly proficient in the skill, though
performing at a high level requires a significant amount of effort. The
final stage is unconscious competence, where you’ve mastered the skill,
and can perform at a very high level while relying mostly on your
intuition.
The main thing to understand, based on these stages, is that it’s perfectly
natural to feel clueless when you first start learning a skill. This simply
means that you’re at the unconscious incompetence stage, which you
can advance from if you’re willing to put in the necessary work.
In addition, it’s important to understand that it’s natural to sometimes
feel like you’re getting worse instead of better. This is often the result of
your improvement, and most commonly of the jump from the
unconscious incompetence stage to the conscious incompetence stage,
which means that you now have the necessary proficiency in order to
identify the mistakes that you have always been making.
Keep in mind that different subskills might be at different levels of
competence, so that if, for example, you’re learning a new language, you
might find that your speaking is at a higher level than your writing. This is
natural, and you can work to close this gap as you improve your overall
proficiency in the skill.

Other articles you may find interesting:

How to Improve Your Writing: A Simple but Comprehensive Guide
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1/3/23, 10:13 AM The Stages of Learning: How You Become More Competent at Skills – Effectiviology

The Factors that Determine Success at Learning

Incidental Learning: Learning Without Trying to Learn

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