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 curricular design. The card deck was developed from a large, diverse evidence-base underpinned by practitioner, educator and learner experiences.

To start, select the educational stimulus (white cards in Chapter 4 ) that you will be designing the teaching activity around, and describe a practical application of this stimulus (see our worked example for inspiration).

Next, you will select moderator cards (see the full cards and definitions in Chapter 5). Card colours 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 thus could foster or challenge learner uncertainty tolerance depending on where/when these moderators are introduced (orange-purple gradient). Moderators work together (synergistically and antagonistically) to impact learners’ uncertainty tolerance development.

Importantly, card colours are not a ‘judgement’ on whether a moderator is good or bad. These colours are merely a reflection of the moderator’s predominant impact on learner uncertainty tolerance development based on current available evidence. These cards are meant only as a guide (not an absolute) 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, uncertainty stimulus, and identify the learner population.
Identify the learner-soured and institutional-sourced moderators that apply to your context.
Based on the distribution of learner-sourced moderator cards (e.g., extent of orange versus purple), institutional considerations and the uncertainty stimulus, select your educator-sourced moderators.
Use the selected cards to develop and describe the uncertainty tolerance teaching activity.
Once implemented, consider additional moderators (or the timing of the moderators) to further enhance the teaching activity.

Below are all of the moderator cards organised by their source: Learner, Educator and System.