This paper argues that personalization of learning is the only way for education to move forward. Due to rapidly changing technology and the massive diversity among students, each student must develop a unique jagged profile of capabilities based on his or her strengths and passions in order to thrive in the world of uncertainty. Thus, schools…

Uncertainty is central to science and is increasingly recognized in science education, but the literature lacks a clear definition of the types of uncertainty and the competencies for navigating them, which vary by context. Therefore, a cross-disciplinary integrative understanding of uncertainty is necessary to navigate complex interdisciplinary…

In this essay, I reflect on my experience teaching graduate classes on social justice in Yerevan. Here, an important part of the experience of injustice is epistemic. By this, I mean that students' discourses of injustice often centre around their perception of other peoples' lack of and/or refusal of their knowledge and consequent…

After many years of dominant anti-utopianism, there has been a resurgent and fruitful interest in utopian thought across disciplines. In our uncertain times, many theorists call for a rethinking of what counts as a desirable future. We respond to this call from an interdisciplinary perspective on the interconnectedness, and potential common cause,…

This study addressed an issue relevant to information and research literacy: how students cope with the challenges of reading a one-sided informational text that is combined with ambiguous graphical information. The topic discussed in the text was the impact of digitalization on students' reading comprehension, and 120 university students were…

The COVID-19 pandemic presented novel and heightened levels of uncertainty for educators. Contributing to a growing literature conceptualizing the role of uncertainty in organizational change, this article explores the changes in practice that teachers made during the pandemic as efforts to either mitigate or leverage different types of…

Social researchers have been adapting methods and practices in response to COVID-19. In the wake of these adaptations, but still in the midst of intersecting crises that the pandemic has exacerbated or shifted (e.g. health-social-political-economic), researchers face a future suffused with methodological uncertainties. This paper presents a…

Outdoor Adventure Education (OAE) may reduce levels of intolerance to certainty (IT) and increase levels of cognitive flexibility (CF) by introducing the individual to situations that create uncertainty and reward cognitive flexibility. This study used a two-group design, where one group featured a 3-day backpacking trip, and one was devoid of any…

There are individual differences in how people respond to emotionally ambiguous cues (i.e., valence bias), which have important consequences for mental health, development, and social functioning, yet how these differences develop in childhood and adolescence is unknown. Extensive literature shows that children's cognitive biases, including…

Adjusting practice to different goals and characteristics is key to learning, but its development remains unclear. Across 2 preregistered experiments, 190 4-to-8-year-olds (106 female; mostly White; data collection: December 2021-September 2022) and 31 adults played an easy and a difficult game, then chose one to practice before a test on either…

This reflection provides a new perspective on the transition from public sector practitioner to academic faculty in order to illustrate how the VUCA and VUCA Prime frameworks may be used by academic developers to support faculty in transitions. First, the VUCA framework is used to describe the context and characteristics of the transition…

This paper discusses the role of ambiguity tolerance in the self-regulation of creative action. First, it traces the conceptual and methodological efforts in developing the construct and describes individual differences in tolerance--intolerance of ambiguity. Then, it examines the empirical studies relating ambiguity tolerance to creative thinking…

Decision-making under unpredictable conditions can cause discomfort in autistic persons due to their preference for predictability. Decision-making impairments might furthermore be associated with a dysregulation of sex and stress hormones. This prospective, cross-sectional study investigated decision-making in 32 autistic participants (AP, 14…

Futures of education are increasingly defined through predictive technologies and methods. We conceptualize 'algorithmic futuring' as the use of data-driven digital methods and predictive infrastructures to anticipate educational futures and animate actions in the present towards their materialization. Specifically, we focus on algorithmic…

Uncertainty is unavoidable in life; it is also an indispensable characteristic of educational settings. The process of learning a foreign language naturally involves interaction and coconstruction of knowledge. During this process, students may encounter uncertainty from a variety of sources, including the course, context, friends, or the teacher.…