Moderator Cards

Michelle D. Lazarus; Georgina C. Stephens

Moderator Cards

How to Apply the Cards in Considering Uncertainty Tolerance Teaching Practices

These cards are designed to support educators’ uncertainty tolerance curriculum design. The card deck was developed from a large, diverse evidence base underpinned by practitioner, educator, and learner experiences. This activity relies on educational uncertainty stimuli from Chapter 4 and educational moderators of uncertainty tolerance described in Chapter 5.

Moderator card colours used in this activity indicate whether a moderator, on balance, is more likely to support (purple) or challenge (orange) learners’ uncertainty tolerance development. Some moderators are much more contextual than others and therefore could support or challenge learner uncertainty tolerance depending on where and when they are introduced (orange-purple gradient). Moderators work together (synergistically and antagonistically) to impact learners’ uncertainty tolerance development.

Importantly, card colours are not judgements on whether a moderator is good or bad. The colours are merely a reflection of the moderators’ predominant impacts on learner uncertainty tolerance development based on current available evidence. The cards are meant only as guides (not absolutes) to help educators purposefully consider their curriculum design in a manner which best supports learners’ development of this critical attribute.

Quick Play Instructions

Choose your learning environment and educational uncertainty stimulus’ (white cards in Chapter 4), then identify the learner population.
Identify the learner-soured and system-sourced moderators that apply to your context (Chapter 5).
Based on the distribution of learner-sourced moderator cards (e.g., extent of orange versus purple), system-sourced considerations, and the uncertainty stimulus, select your educator-sourced moderators.
Use the selected cards to develop and describe the uncertainty tolerance teaching activity.

Once the teaching activity has been implemented, consider additional moderators (or the timing of the moderators) to further enhance the activity.

Below are all the moderator cards organised by source: learner, educator and system.