What is Big Little Thinking?

 Big Little Thinking (BLT) is a framework to inspire critical, creative, and consilient thinking through wild and wicked problems. 

Big Little Thinking (BLT) is for teachers, learners, and leaders who want to explore complex issues in contested spaces.

Wild and Wicked Problems are problems characterised by inherent uncertainty, complexity, paradox, tensions, and trade-offs.

• They are messy, tangled, and knotted.
• They involve lefts and rights and wrongs.
• They are divisive and disruptive.

Wild and wicked problems can be BIG:

• The ethics of artificial intelligence
• Cultural diversity and mass migration
• Inclusive education
• Social media and truth
• Relations between religion and science
• Social and environmental sustainability
• Gender roles and equality

And little:

• Whether to leave the toilet seat up 
• How to tie shoelaces

The BLT Process is an adaptable way to think through wild and wicked problems.

NAME

• Initiate: Choose a topic and problem.
• Populate: Share knowledge and experiences.

FRAME

• Investigate: Use the Big Little Window (BLW) to explore the dimensions, domains, dynamics and developments of the problem. Specifically, Circle, Square, and Centre the problem.

TAME

• Ideate: Imagine possible solutions
• Create: Create practical solutions
• Actuate: Implement a solution
• Evaluate: Review a solution
• Iterate or Disrupt: Repeat or adapt the process and/or reframe the problem.

A ZYGO is BLT's most basic unit of thinking. 'Zygo' literally means union or yoke. 

Synonyms like 'pairs, dyads, poles, tensions, or spectrums' are useful. However, Zygo emphasises the relational, contextual and graduated nature of a pair. It implies possible relations between two including 

• both-and-either-or-neither-nor, more-less, in between and beyond.

Zygo Examples

• Nature-Culture
• Past-Future
• Religious-Secular
• Traditional-Progressive
• Expand-Compress
• Soft-Hard
• Diverge-Converge
• Fission-Fusion
• Isolated-Integrated 
• Masculine-Feminine