HCD.4:4.2.3 - Preserve Different Proposals for Learning a Method

When the subject is a Method described by a pattern language, two candidate orderings expose different questions. Use them as hypotheses to examine, rather than as a prescribed scale.

One proposal follows recognition in a supplied example → explanation of situation, conflicts and mechanism → supported enactment → independent familiar enactment → adaptation in a new context → composition and repair → developing and testing variants, helping others learn and improving the pattern description. Its useful question is how the person’s ways of using a Method differ as demands change. Lack of evidence sits outside this sequence. Composition, repair, variant testing, teaching others and improving the pattern description must each have their own target and observation; they need not form one highest stage.

The other follows noticing isolated signs → recognizing the conflict among requirements in the situation → selecting an applicable Method → supported enactment → independent action → adaptation and composition in a new context. Its useful question is how interpretation of the situation makes a Method choice possible. Recognizing a finished example in the first proposal does not establish that a person notices a conflict in an unlabelled situation in the second.

Localize each proposed link. To examine signs-to-conflict, contrast two situations with the same conspicuous sign but different relationships among requirements; ask what action each warrants. To examine conflict-to-selection, retain the difficulty while making a neighboring Method a plausible rival. To examine supported-to-independent enactment, change only the help that supplied the targeted contribution while retaining legitimate later-Work tools. To examine familiar-to-unfamiliar use, identify the consequential novelty and obtain an attempt that does not merely repeat the demonstrated answer.

Compare the proposals against the same work and learner evidence. Keep a useful local order where its grounds survive; split dimensions or allow another route where the evidence distinguishes them. Do not convert either proposal into an unordered vocabulary list, equate the two, or require a person to traverse every distinction before useful work. §§5.5 and HCD.6:5.6 show how a proposed relation changes while the required later-Work result stays the same.