MDPE.Application:5.1.3.2 - 2. Follow the connections that produce the difficulty

Take an actual episode or a clearly marked constructed example. Follow it backward to the preparation, selection or support that produced it, and forward to its consequences.

For example, a learner performs a memorized sequence successfully with the instructor but interrupts an unfamiliar partner who pauses. The instructor was supplying an unnoticed cue; the lesson rewarded completion of the sequence; the local contest gives the learner a reason to perfect a fixed routine. These are candidate explanations until the episode supplies their grounds. Distinguish them from insufficient practice, an unclear signal, an unsuitable track or the unfamiliar partner choosing a different activity.

Follow the connections far enough to find a changeable relation:

• a classroom result is used as evidence for a different receiving capability;
• a judge sees amplitude but cannot observe the partner response on which the social use depends;
• contest recognition controls teaching invitations, so changing the contest can also change someone’s livelihood;
• a long teaching block occupies the only social floor;
• participants learn from a record that omits the condition under which a movement should be varied or stopped;
• a retained label groups music, movement and events, and the project mistakenly treats them as one unchanged subject.

Write the causal claim at the scope the evidence permits. An observed association can direct the next inquiry without establishing that a school or contest caused a population change. A source account of one city and period does not establish the present local relation.

Keep an action-changing rival when it would require a different repair. Do not manufacture an extra investigation if available evidence already selects a sufficiently robust response.