What's the Big Idea?

More and more, we are hearing calls for a more creative workforce activated by, as the business writer Daniel H. Pink calls it, "a whole new mind". The idea seems to be that in an information economy, developing creative and critical thinking skills is becoming increasingly necessary for our citizenry in order to effectively adapt to an ever-changing workplace and a radically fluctuating economy. If this is indeed true (and I believe that it is), our education systems must actively support learners in becoming increasing flexible, collaborative, and innovative. This is exactly what a recent report, called "Tough Choices, Tough Times", created by the National Center on Education and the Economy, urgently calls for, and our times and our choices have become significantly tougher since 2007, when the report was first released.
The document recommends pedagogy that scaffolds:

"...comfort with ideas and abstractions, analysis and synthesis, creativity, innovation, self-discipline, organization, flexibility, ability to work on a team..." (p. xxv)

As that report states, meaningful 21st Century education depends

"...on a deep vein of creativity that is constantly renewing itself, and on a myriad of people who can imagine how people can use things that have never been available before..."

The organization I work for, the Chicago Arts Partnerships in Education (CAPE) has been saying this for a long time. Sixteen years. We have historically been met with skepticism for our interest in "soft skills", but remained confident that we were on the right track. Let's hope that the new "creativity" rhetoric coming out of the world of business will somehow penetrate policy in the education sector.
So how DO we scaffold comfort with ideas and abstractions?
One way for arts educators to do so is to recognize that the arts are not only about virtuosity and skill acquisition, but are also modes of thought. The arts produce emotional responses, but the arts are also a kind of cognition. CAPE organizes its arts education partnerships (collaborations between teachers and artists in which the arts and other academic subjects reinforce each other rather than compete with each other) around Big Ideas.
What are Big Ideas? We haven't been very good at explaining what we mean by the concept, though like the 1964 Supreme Court ruling on obscenity, we think we know it when we see it.
A laundry list of types of ancient Native American dwellings is not a Big Idea, but an investigation of what made each of those houses homes is. Naming the names of dinosaurs is not a Big Idea. Developing theories of dinosaur extinction is.
Big ideas usually describe processes and typically have both metaphoric and concrete elements. They contain a bit of poetry and mystery, but are not so abstract that they can't be investigated.
Not every idea is a Big Idea. Little Ideas are just that. Little ideas. Big Ideas are intriguing. They invite questions and multiple answers.
CAPE classrooms have investigated such abstract AND concrete Big Ideas as Structure ("How are such different phenomenon as governments, bodies, buildings, cities, and dances structured?"), Harmony ("How do different elements work together in satisfying ways?"), Scale ("When is something considered big and when is something considered small?"), Shape ("What are the shapes around us, how do they fit together, and how do we fit into them?"), Internment ("How did Japanese Americans maintain hope in WWII internment camps?"), Mapping ("How do we make symbolic representations of how our worlds are arranged?"), Stewardship of the Earth ("How can we take better care of the planet?"), etc. These Big Ideas have activated enthusiastic teachers and artists and students, and produced extraordinary art in CAPE classrooms.
But our partners have tended to either love the idea of Big Ideas, or else found the whole concept to be impenetrable. What we lacked was a workable definition.
And that's where our beloved colleague Catherine Main, Director of the Early Childhood Program in the College of Education at the University of Illinois at Chicago (and a CAPE parent) has come to our rescue, sharing a definition of Big Ideas that may save us from our tongue tied enthusiasm:

"A big idea is an overarching idea that unifies, inspires,
and resonates with children, an idea that is rich with possibilities and permits teachers and children to work together in many ways."

- Chaille, C. (2008). Constructivism across the Curriculum in Early Childhood Classrooms: Big Ideas as Inspiration.

Unifies. Inspires. Resonates with children. Rich with possibilities. Permits collaborative work.
Simple, elegant, accurate, and USEFUL. Just what a definition should be.

Arnold Aprill
Founding and Creative Director
Chicago Arts Partnerships in Education (CAPE)
www.capeweb.org