Placeholder Domain 4 - Worked Examples and Calibrated Review
What this section covers
Worked examples teach procedure, but only if they are reproduced, not merely read. Candidates must understand faded guidance - studying a full example, then a partially completed one, then a blank problem - and error logging, where each mistake is tagged by cause (knowledge gap, misread stem, calculation slip, scope confusion). Confidence calibration matters too: a candidate who cannot distinguish 'I recognize this' from 'I can reproduce this' will overestimate readiness.
Traps that appear in questions
Familiarity masquerades as mastery. Reading a solution and nodding is not the same as generating it. Another trap is overfitting to one example and failing a variation that changes a single condition. A third is reviewing only correct answers, which leaves the error pattern invisible. Questions that present a near-identical scenario with one altered constraint expose all three traps.
Worked example
Use a three-pass loop on one worked example. Pass one: close the source and reproduce the solution from a blank page, stating each step aloud. Pass two: compare against the source and write the first divergence point. Pass three: change one condition and solve again. Log the divergence as a tag, for example 'scope: applied rule outside its stated boundary,' and schedule a retrieval attempt two days later.
Rule of thumb
If you cannot reproduce the worked example from a blank page without prompts, you have not learned it yet. Reproduction, not recognition, is the threshold.