ABSTRACT
What do a doctor meeting with patients, a teacher in the classroom, a secretary at work, a hobbyist, and a person preparing a meal at home all have in common?
First, they are all engaged in goal-oriented activities.1 The doctor has as a goal helping his or her patients, a process that may entail performing diagnoses and prescribing treatments. The doctor may also have as goals building or maintaining rapport with patients and trying to affect their long-term behavior. He or she may also be concerned about non-medical issues such as building up a medical practice, making sure that patients have the right insurance coverage, and that at least a minimum number of patients are seen that day. At any given time during interactions with any particular patient, one or more of these goals will predominate. The doctor will draw upon cognitive and material resources (for example, what he or she knows, what medicines and treatments are available, his or her perceptions of time constraints) in the service of those goals. Similarly, a teacher has short-and long-term goals, including, perhaps, responding at a specific moment to a particular student in an appropriate way, working through the content of the part of today’s lesson currently under discussion, building a base for future work, helping students to develop over the course of the year, preparing them for high-stakes tests, and more. The secretary may be working on a particular task, with others on the stack; these have to be prioritized and juggled. The same is true of the hobbyist and the cook. Certain things need to be done, subject to various constraints, in order to achieve the goals that they or others have tacitly or explicitly set for them.
