from: MS Clip Art

I have had the good fortune to both participate in and read my good friend Dr. Krista Ritchie’s Ph.D. dissertation.  In the document she argues that problem finding is a special case of problem solving (information processing) theory.  It was an intriguing argument to me, so I decided to go right to the source, which was Newell, A., & Simon, H.A. (1972). Human Problem Solving. Prentice-Hall: Englewood Cliffs, NJ. The book is much denser than anticipated, especially at 920 pages.  But, my attention was caught on page 6:

As it will become clear, a theory of the psychology of problem solving requires not only good task analyses but also an inventory of possible problem solving mechanisms from which one can surmise what actual mechanisms are being used by humans. 

This struck me as interesting, because I have long argued that good problem finding requires expertise – knowing which bags of tricks you can utilize to better understand what makes a creative and exciting problem to study.  This is also extremely situated (e.g., Brown,  Collins, Duguid) in nature because there is an authentic framework that justifies making problem finding and solving appropriate and relevant.