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Understanding by Design
GP Wiggins, J McTighe, LJ Kiernan, F Frost
1998
The understanding by design guide to creating high quality units
GP Wiggins, J McTighe
2011
Acquiring an understanding of design: evidence of childrens insight problem
solving
MA Defeyter, TP German
2003
Summary of Article 3: Acquiring an understanding of design
This article focuses on different ways humans can use tools to solve a
problem and how there are changes in your core knowledge during the ages
of 5-7 year olds. These tools are human made artifacts that have a different
use than what is being asked to solve the problem. The study shows that
humans have difficulty taking what the tool is supposed to do out of their
minds in order to solve the problem that was given to them. This idea is
called functional fixedness because the function of the tool is already fixed in
their brains. They gave a problem to two groups of 5 year olds and two
groups of 6-7 year olds. One of each age group was shown the function of
the object before hand, while the other group was not shown. What they
found was the 5 year olds completed the problem faster in both cases
because it was easier for them to not think about the tools original function
than it was for the 6-7 year olds, and it was explained by realizing that the 67 year olds already used this tool habitually and they could not get over it.
They came up with 2 more experiments that were similar to keep testing.
The second experiment was introduced to 120 children ranging 5-7
coming from different backgrounds. They were all given 6 objects to solve a
problem, but half of them were shown the function of the objects and the
other half were not shown. Out of the 6 objects given to them, only one
would actually solve the problem, and the others were either inappropriate
for the problem, demonstration objects, or distractor objects. For the group
of children that were shown the function, the 5 year olds found the correct
object to solve the problem the fastest, but it still was not on the first try. For
the other group that was not shown any demonstrations, the 7 year olds
found it the fastest almost 100% of the time using the correct object first.
The 5 and 6-year-old groups were not too far behind that. These conclusions
were in line with what the first experiment showed, saying that when shown

the use of the object there is a sense of functional fixedness in the older
children.
In the third and final experiment, there was also 120 children ranging
5-7 that participated all coming from different backgrounds. They were also
shown 6 objects, but these were a little more complex objects, but had the
same idea around them as in experiment 2 where only one of the objects
was actually going to be able to solve the problem. Half of the children were
shown how the objects worked and the other half was not shown. For the half
that were shown, the 5 year olds were the fastest by a lot, with the 6 year
olds really struggling. With the half that were not shown, the 6 year olds
were almost at 100% with how fast they found the object that would be used
to solve the problem, and the 5 year olds stayed the same as when they
were shown, but were the slowest in this scenario. Once more, this aligned
with what was first said about the effects of functional fixedness on younger
children versus older children. The discussion after the experiments
concluded that it was harder for the older children that were shown the
functions because they knew its intended design and it wasnt being used
like that. It also showed that the younger children that scored highly in both
cases could have been because of a lack of knowledge to understand the
design, even when shown the function before hand.