HCD.4:4.2.1 - Construct Distinguishable Ways of Acting

Use this extension when different accounts of how proficiency develops would change a learning, assessment or next-practice decision. Begin with the claim rows and representative later Work, rather than filling predefined levels. A small model of one consequential contribution is often enough.

Recover the action and its meaningful differences. Inspect the domain Method, a worked performance and relevant learner attempts. Ask what the person attends to, how they represent the difficulty, which alternatives they consider, what they do, and how they detect or repair a wrong result. Compare the same contribution under compatible conditions. For example, counting every incoming message and identifying distinct requests before estimating work are qualitatively different strategies, even when a particular dataset makes their totals coincide. Two arbitrary score bands need not describe different strategies.

Write descriptions that another practitioner can discriminate. For each candidate way, give the task conditions, the person’s action or reasoning, the resulting work product, help allowed, a positive example and a nearby response that would not warrant that description. Include plausible partial or mistaken reasoning when it changes instruction. A person who notices duplicate messages only after a question is different, for this use, from one who independently chooses the appropriate unit. The same person may show either response in different settings. “No admissible evidence” describes the assessor’s knowledge; it is not an initial state of the person.

Choose the grain by the decision. Split a description when its components can lead to different instruction or different evidence. Join descriptions when the distinction changes neither the task, feedback, inference nor receiving decision. Do not create a node for every sentence of a pattern or a step of its mantra. Conversely, do not compress recognizing a difficulty, selecting a Method and enacting it merely because one task needs all three.

Separate dimensions before ordering them. Ask whether one contribution can be available while another is absent or uncertain. Construct or find tasks that expose those combinations: calculation with the unit supplied; unit selection with calculation supplied; and their combination in a whole task. Differences across those conditions warrant separate descriptions for the local decision. They do not establish statistical independence or show that isolated success composes automatically. Preserve interfaces and simultaneous resource demands through §4.3.

Locate the current and intended profiles with their evidence. A profile can occupy several condition-qualified descriptions or remain between competing interpretations. Record that uncertainty instead of forcing one label. Keep the desired later-Work performance as the target even when an intermediate instructional task is easier. If personal observations are unavailable, retain a proposed model and target; do not invent that person’s starting position, gap or actual passage through it.