All people, places, capacities, production combinations and outcomes below are invented teaching models. Units have meaning inside a card only. They cannot describe a real Queensland economy, price, budget, technology, market, law or household. The teacher can give one card at a time. No learner personal disclosure is needed.
Card A · Sunday Studio
A fictional neighbourhood studio has the same room, volunteers, equipment and weekly hours for one planning week. It can prepare reading circles and repair workshops. With these inputs fixed, its maximum feasible combinations are:
| Repair workshops | Reading circles |
|---|---|
| 0 | 12 |
| 1 | 11 |
| 2 | 9 |
| 3 | 6 |
| 4 | 0 |
The table is a simplified production possibility frontier (PPF), not observed data. It assumes every listed combination uses the available capacity efficiently and the model holds relevant inputs and technique fixed. A combination such as 2 repair workshops and 6 circles uses less than the possible 2 and 9. A combination such as 3 workshops and 9 circles is beyond this modeled capacity. The case says nothing about demand, who benefits, quality or whether extra workshops are socially preferable.
Card B · Careful Library Desk
A fictional library desk has eight staff-hours on Saturday and a queue of two possible tasks: catalogue returned books or help patrons navigate a digital catalogue. The manager first schedules all eight hours for returns. Switching the last two staff-hours to digital help means forgoing the next-best feasible alternative of cataloguing 24 returned books. A staff member suggests an additional desk, but no extra staff or equipment is yet available. Book counts are invented and do not measure the value of digital help. Neither task is automatically more important.
Card C · Riverbend Print Room
A fictional print room supplies community notices. The site space it occupies illustrates land/natural resources; people who set and check type supply labour; its reusable printer is produced capital; a coordinator combines these inputs and takes planning risk, illustrating entrepreneurial ability. Paper stock is a manufactured intermediate input, not the land example. For terminology practice only, the model pairs land/natural resources with rent, labour with wages, capital with interest, and entrepreneurial ability with profit. Those pairings are textbook categories; no payment, profit or ownership arrangement actually occurs in the card. The room can produce 40 large-type notices with its current stock, but the card gives no current market demand or distribution rule.
Card D · Shade and Seats Council
A fictional council has enough weekend crew time for one small project in a model week: put temporary shade at a gathering place or refurbish a set of public seats. A preliminary note says both could benefit users, but includes no counts of users, access needs, costs, consultation or ownership/control arrangements for the inputs. The council must ask: what and how much to provide, how to provide it, and for whom. Completing the chosen project could use the crew fully (technical efficiency in this tiny model), while ownership of resources and access to benefits (equity questions) remain separate. No real council or public policy is represented.
Card E · Studio Technique Trial
The Sunday Studio proposes a new workshop template. In an internal trial, the same inputs could produce 4 workshops and 6 circles, compared with 3 workshops and 6 circles on Card A's old frontier. The trial is fictional, unverified outside the model, and shows one additional feasible combination. It suggests a workshop-side outward possibility if reproducible. One point cannot define the entire new frontier or prove overall economic growth. The technique might require training that Card E has not costed.
Card F · Two Allocation Proposals
A fictional planning group considers two uses of Sunday Studio's original fixed capacity: Proposal F1: 2 workshops and 9 circles; Proposal F2: 3 workshops and 6 circles. Both sit on Card A's frontier. A third suggestion, 2 workshops and 6 circles, lies inside it. The group has no evidence on who owns/controls the inputs, attendance, accessibility, distribution or preference. A participant says “F2 is definitely best because it has more workshops.” Another says “F1 must be more equitable because it has more circles.” Neither conclusion follows from the production quantities alone. The group may state its chosen criterion and the evidence needed.
SubjectNest original fictional teaching models © NeuroForgeIO Pty Ltd 2026, CC BY 4.0.