It reminds me of the work of Wiggins and McTighe, who insisted that every syllabus and curriculum be organised around 'big ideas' and 'essential questions'
They use ideas and questions as organising principles (as William Byers also defines it), so i don't think essential questions and big ideas can be directly used to generate new knowledge, but they suggest different ways of organising them, and we know that this alone can trigger new thinking. I think this is also what you were getting at in your post?
But ultimately, to generate new knowledge (via research or invention) we need much, much more specific ideas and questions (of the kind that non-experts may initially find boring). Starting from the broad Qs and ideas, tools like conventional iterative problem analysis or question operationalisation could be sufficient to get knowledge generation going, or more unorthodox methods could be adapted for this purpose too e.g. De Bono's 'concept fan' (applied to ideas or questions), Goldratt's contradiction analysis (usually applied to ideas), a Van Fraassen analysis (applied to questions) or the cross of creative questioning (usually applied to questions).
It reminds me of the work of Wiggins and McTighe, who insisted that every syllabus and curriculum be organised around 'big ideas' and 'essential questions'
Interesting! How would you apply their principles of Understanding by Design to creating new knowledge?
They use ideas and questions as organising principles (as William Byers also defines it), so i don't think essential questions and big ideas can be directly used to generate new knowledge, but they suggest different ways of organising them, and we know that this alone can trigger new thinking. I think this is also what you were getting at in your post?
But ultimately, to generate new knowledge (via research or invention) we need much, much more specific ideas and questions (of the kind that non-experts may initially find boring). Starting from the broad Qs and ideas, tools like conventional iterative problem analysis or question operationalisation could be sufficient to get knowledge generation going, or more unorthodox methods could be adapted for this purpose too e.g. De Bono's 'concept fan' (applied to ideas or questions), Goldratt's contradiction analysis (usually applied to ideas), a Van Fraassen analysis (applied to questions) or the cross of creative questioning (usually applied to questions).