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BIG IDEAS 

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Are you curious for more? Would you like to get in touch? Feel free to contact our lead directly for any questions or inquiries you may have. tikvah@studioblended.com +31 6 42 47 29 69

Image: “Architectural Sketch by Cazú Zegers © Cazú Zegers – all rights reserved.”

To be elegant and powerful, your curriculum design must be coherent and focused on clear and worthy intellectual priorities – the ‘big ideas’ (after Wiggins & McTighe 2005, 65-66). By far the most interesting component of the fit for purpose framework are the big ideas. They are the backbone of our time robust design, and more dynamic than you would expect. They are also an excellent way to align the various subjects in your course or degree. The OECD (2020a, p. 24) too reports, that a way forward in overloaded curricula is ‘focusing on conceptual understanding or “big ideas” to avoid an excessive number of subjects or topics within the allotted time’.

We argue that you just need up to some 5-10 big ideas for your entire course curriculum or perhaps even the entire degree. They best resemble exit goals of your course or degree, that you arrive at over time. They set the scope of your course or degree.

Big ideas just need 1 – 2 words each (after Lynn Erickson 2001, 35 in Wiggins & McTighe 2005, p. 69). Where a learning journey is more like storytelling, big ideas are about framing the content. Making it really simple.

Here are some examples of big ideas:
-      Land markets (in a course about land)
-      Natural selection (in a biological course)
-      Nature Based Solutions (in an urban course)

The challenge then is to identify the few big ideas and carefully design around them, resisting to teach everything of possible value for each topic(Wiggins & McTighe 2005, 66).

Identifying big ideas is especially hard. ‘Framing big ideas is [also] not simple.’ (...) Or as Mitchell (Mitchell et al. 2016, p. 6) and his research team conclude: ‘Our experience shows that if big ideas are to be framed differently and not merely extricated from curriculum documents, textbooks or even research papers, then teachers need to be supported in developing these big ideas.‘

What exactly is a ‘big idea’? There are many working definitions[1] around, so the point is more to get what the spirit of the ‘big idea’ is, and how they can point us towards time robust curriculum design.

Big ideas resonate with the current experienced ‘hangover’ feeling among scholars and practitioners that is the result of decades of too tightly formulated learning outcomes and objectives in the design of curricula – and the felt need for teaching to take centre stage again in Higher Education (Schoot & Sluijsmans 2021, Biesta 2024).

In fact, the concept of ‘learning objectives’ is going through it’s own hype cycle turbulence at the moment. Educational experts say contradictory things[2]: from “goals are the drivers of everything and the brain needs it” to “education has become only catering for external purposes”.

A hindsight is perhaps, that we need some structure to go by, in order to organise education[3]. We need a clear view on the learnings. This hindsight, is actually already from the 1940s too.

What we can take from the current turbulence around learning objectives, is that you can also over-do it with learning objectives. Often times indeed, set standards are too many, too big, too small or too vague (after Wiggins & McTighe 2005, 60-65 citing also work by Caswell & Campbell that goes back to 1935).

Therefore, we instead are talking meta, at the level of the fit for purpose framework for the curriculum of entire course or degree. And we’re thinking instrumental: how can we use all this to best design in a modular way? For that purpose, we don’t look at the more micro level of learning objectives, but rather at big ideas and learnings.

Big ideas and learnings allow you to keep the spirit of designing for teaching, and strive to meet the set quality standards from that place, not from a top down stifling way that gets lost in a multitude of indicators, how to formulate outcomes exactly and in measurements of these outcomes.

A focus on big ideas leaves oxygen and room to align with set standards such as defined at national or European level. One of them, is the Bologna Declaration for Higher Education[4] (2010) which seeks to bring coherence to Higher Education systems across Europe.

After all, the accreditations and exit terms such as from the Dublin descriptors[5] for the end terms of a bachelor and master degree, ultimately are here to stimulate you, to make the actual learning more effective.

The fit for purpose framework we propose for technical resilience is far from a straightjacket – it is open by nature. It leaves plenty of space for curiosity, wonder, the imagination, inspiration and all that beauty of teaching, equally as giving you a robust ground to stand on and the ability for open building.

And, here comes the fascinating part: big ideas are dynamic. Which concepts carry through time in your domain? How can you use big ideas to actually innovate your existing academic curriculum? A ‘hype’ is a mismanaged expectation: which big ideas are already passe?

How can you use big ideas to actually innovate your existing academic curriculum? It all relates to which ones you choose to strategically focus on, and then invest in as you further design and develop your course or degree.

How will you set the scope of the knowledge domain of your course or degree? We use a paradigm shift model for that.

Curious? Would you like to explore this with your team of teachers? Have a look at our workshop ‘big ideas’ or at our bespoke design studio for your course/degree.

On big ideas

‘Big idea’ is not a new concept, and goes back at least to the beginning of the 20th century (see i.e.  Dewey 1902) – even as it started with children and primary schools, then secondary schools, and arrived later for applications at universities (see i.e. William 2014).

A big idea may be thought of as a linchpin – the device that keeps the wheel in place on an axle. It avoids the curriculum is just bits and pieces of facts that cannot take us anywhere (Wiggins & McTighe 2005, 66). ‘Without a focus on the big ideas that have lasting value, students are too easily left with forgettable fragments of knowledge’ (Wiggins & McTighe 2005, 66). Big ideas can also be the practical way, the hands on way, to integrate various disciplines in interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary education.

Big ideas are chosen especially for their power to explain phenomena, they provide a comprehensive survey of science (Wynn & Wiggins 1997 in Wiggins & McTighe 2005, 67).

‘Big’ is not necessarily intelectually vast, but pedagogically powerful (see also Bloom 1981, 235 in Wiggins & McTighe 2005, 69), and ‘points to the ‘core’ of the subject – they need to be uncovered, we have to dig deep until we get to the core. 

Big ideas are hard won results of inquiry, ways of thinking and perceiving that are the province of the expert. They are not obvious, in fact, most expert big ideas are abstract and counterintuitive to the novice [learner], prone to misunderstanding (Wiggins & McTighe 2005, 67).

The big ideas and learnings here proposed must still be broken down into learning objectives to become useful for actual activities such as a lecture or workshop. But one teacher may have different needs than another in their articulation. The baseline is that you want to ensure actual effective learning curves.

Curious for how we use big ideas to strategize a decade strong curriculum for your course or degree? Have a look at our design angle, paradigm shifts.

Key projects

We organised a workshop for the academic staff of AMS, to make them conscious of the undercurrents and trends in the curriculum of their master degree and source within the diverse team where they foresee the big ideas going in the near future. For more see our events page.

^{“It was inspiring and fruitful [for me as participant of the workshop]. I realised a course has baseline building blocks versus the trends and hypes that come and go. I realised where to invest in most. I am taking this further for my own field for sure.”}

Our Audio Podcast

🎙 Keynote: Big ideas and modular curriculum design.
Prefer to read? Transcript
Listen on: Acast Spotify Apple
Release summer ‘24  

Listen to this episode to discover how we use big ideas as linking pin for our technical curriculum design.

For more background see our page on technical resilience.

Today’s keynote was delivered [in a 20 min. form] on the kick-off of the new academic year with the academic teaching staff of the Amsterdam Institute for Advanced Metropolitan Studies (AMS) in Amsterdam, the Netherlands, on Friday August 30, 2024.

References 

Biesta, G. (2024) ‘Taking education seriously: the ongoing challenge’. Educational Theory, May 28. Available: https://doi.org/10.1111/edth.12646(Accessed: October 27, 2025).

Dewey, J. (1902), The child and the curriculum. Chicago IL, University of Chicago press, reprinted in Hickman, L.A. and T.M. Alexander (eds.) 1998, The essential Dewey, Vol. 1. Bloomington IN: Indiana University Press.

Mitchell, I., Keast, S., Panizzon, D., and Mitchell, J. (2016), ‘Using ‘big ideas’ to enhance teaching and student learning.’ Teachers and Teaching, pp. 1-15. Available: doi: 10.1080/13540602.2016.1218328

OECD (2020a), Curriculum (re)design, a series of thematic reports from the OECD Education 2030 project. Available :https://www.oecd.org/content/dam/oecd/en/about/projects/edu/education-2040/2-1-curriculum-design/brochure-thematic-reports-on-curriculum-redesign.pdf (Accessed: 26 November 2025).

OECD (2020b), Curriculum overload: A way forward, OECD Publishing, Paris, Available: https://doi.org/10.1787/3081ceca-en (Accessed: November 14, 2025).

Osberg, D. and Biesta, G. (2021), ‘Beyond curriculum: Groundwork for a non-instrumental theory of education.’ Educational Philosophy and Theory, (53)1, pp. 57-70. Available: doi: 10.1080/00131857.2020.1750362

Schoot, M. and Sluijsmans, D. (2021), ‘Het dichtgetimmerde curriculum; Over de doorgeschoven verschuiving van inhoud naar vorm in het hoger onderwijs’ [The boarded up curriculum. About the current shift from content to form that has gone too far in higher education’], Edukitchen, 28 July [In Dutch]. Available: http://edukitchen.nl/het-dichtgetimmerde-curriculum/ [Accessed: October 27, 2025).

Tyler, R. 1947 (2013) Basic principles of curriculum and instruction. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Wiggins, G. and Mc Tighe, J. (2005) Understanding by Design. Expanded 2nd edition. Alexandria Virginia USA: Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development.


William, D. (2014) Principled Assessment design, SSAT. The Schools Network, London UK.
[see also his website https://dylanwiliam.org/Dylan_Wiliams_website/Welcome.html ]

Footnotes

[1] See for example this working definition (after Lynn Erickson 2001, 35 in Wiggins & McTighe 2005) which states that big ideas are:

-      Broad and abstract

-      Represented by just one or two words

-      Universal in application

-      Timeless- they carry through the ages

-      Represented by different examples that share common attributes

[2] Original sources: ‘Goals are the drivers of everything, and the brain learns most efficiently and effectively when it is motivated by worthy and desirable goals’ (McTighe & Willis 2019). And: ‘education (as it is today) is no longer a coherent entity or practice but has been largely reduced to being an instrument for external aims and purposes’ such as accreditations and measuring learning outcomes (Osberg & Bietsta 2021).

[3] Tyler writes (1949, p. 3): ‘No doubt some excellent educational work is being done by artistic teachers who do not have a clear conception of goals but do have an intuitive sense of what is good teaching, what materials are significant, what topics are worth dealing with and how to present material and develop topics effectively with studets. Nevertheless, if an educational program is to be planned and if efforts for continued improvement are to be made, it is very necessary to have some conception of the goals that are being aimed at. These educational objectives become the criteria by which materials are selected, content is outlined, instructional procedures are developped and tests and examinations are prepared. Hence if we are to study an educational program systematically and intelligently we must first be sure as to the educational objectives aimed at’

[4] The Bologna Declaration states that: “A learning outcome is a measurable result of a learning experience which allows us to ascertain to which extent / level / standard a competence has been formed
or enhanced. Learning outcomes are not properties unique to each student, but statements which allow higher education institutions to measure whether students have developed their competences to the required level. Learning outcomes describe what a learner is expected to know, understand and
be able to demonstrate after successful completion of a process of learning. They are statements of concrete and verifiable signs that show how the planned competences, including the required levels of knowledge, are being developed or acquired.”
(Lokhoff et al., 2010, pp. 21–22). See also https://education.ec.europa.eu/education-levels/higher-education/inclusive-and-connected-higher-education/bologna-process[accessed May 25, 2024].

[5] Find the Dublin descriptors for instance here https://create2021.utwente.nl/doc/DublinDescriptors.pdf

We are here especially for you as unique course/training coordinator, to come alongside you and partner with you, as you work on a curriculum, so that you can offer effective and time/time/resilient education in its simplest form.

More design angles we use

Technical resilience
Big ideas
Paradigm shifts/decade strong
Simplicity and decluttering
Human resilience
Modular
Innovative and deep pedagogy
Assesment / evaluation
Time dimension
Evidence-based design
Financial health and resilience by (re)design
Multi- Inter- and transdisciplinary
Flexibilisation and personalisation
Blended



Curios? Feel free to contact our senior advisor and teacher trainer directly:
tikvah@studioblended.com

Resilient education that stands the test of time - by design.