Schools of psychology

Schools of psychology
1. Structuralism
In the beginning the subject matter of mind and its processes were the part of biology as well as philosophy, but it was an independent discipline with the help of William Wundt.

William Wundt (1832 – 1920)
• Father of structuralism
• Father of experimental psychology.
• In 1879, he started the first psychological laboratory in Leipzing in Germany.
• Wundt’s first systematic book of psychology – Physiological Psychology.

• Four notable psychologists in this school were – Titchener, Weber, Fechner, Wundt.

• The technique used to analyze mind – introspection.

Important tenants of structuralism
1. Psychology is a science which studies the conscience experiences of mind.

2. The consciousness is made up of various mental elements such as sensation, images, affection etc. All these constitute conscious experience.

3. All our experiences are the combination of these mental elements.

4. The main objectives of psychology is to study and understand the structure of human mind by analyzing mental experiences and discovering the various elements and the manner in which they are compounded.

5. The sensory experiences are combined together to form images about the external environment in the consciousness.

6. The qualities of mental elements are reflected in ones behaviour, emotions, ideas etc.

7. The mind is the sum total of various mental experiences ( thoughts, feelings, sensation, attention, imagination, direct knowledge etc.)

8. The consciousness is the sum total of the mental experiences at a given time.

9. There is no causal relationship between mind and body, they are parallel to each other.

Contribution to education
1. Structuralism separates psychology from philosophy and physiology and developed into an independent organized discipline.

2. It emphasized systematic observation of the activities of the learner under controlled condition.

3. It gave an experimental method for studying human behaviour – experimental introspection.

4. It initiates a spirit of science and experimentation in the field of education.
Limitation
1. Experimental introspection is unreliable, limiting and subjective.

2. Structuralism too concerned with internal mental processes that are not directly observable and can’t be actually measurable.
3. It can’t be employed to study the behaviour of children, mentally deviated etc.

Functionalism
• Originated as the reaction to the school structuralism.

• William James
Father of American psychology
Initiated to developed the school of functionalism
Book – the principles of psychology – this book make psychology a serious subject.

In the subject matter of psychology he includes the following areas – animal behaviour, religious experiences, abnormal behaviour.

• Animal behavior  became the study subject of functionalism.

• James said : the consciousness are the exposure of thoughts and cannot be split into structures.

• His aim : through psychology he studied the functions of mind.
• Psychologist belong in this school were – Thormdile, Cattell, Woodworth, Dewey, Angell, carr.

• Fundamental tenants.
1. The aim of psychology is to study of what for or what of mental processes.
2. It concerned the nature and function of mental process  give emphasis to how these mental process happens.
3. The main function of mind is to aid man to adjust with his environment.
4. The higher mental process emerged when he meet or demands to meet more wide and complex situation.
5. They believed that mind and body are intrinsically one, they appear as distinct elements. The mental activates are the result of adjustment between the mind and the body.

Contribution to education
1. They demanded theoretically overloaded curriculum with subjects having practical utility.
2. Study of various problems of the learner and their solutions is emphasized by functionalism in education.
3. They gave much importance to learning by doing and developed activity oriented methods like project method for teaching and learning.
4. They emphasized child centered learning.

Limitations
1. The term function is variously used by different functionalist and couldnot given a clear explanation of important psychological concepts.
2. The function of mind is to aid man’s adjustment to  his environment is highly biological and neglect the socio cultural influence in the functioning of mind.
3. Functionalism focused only on consciousness and neglected the unconscious aspect of human mind.

School of Behaviourism
• Founder J.B. Watson (American psychologist)
• Exists against structuralism and functionalism
• Other notable psychologists are :- Skinner, Pavlov, Tolman, Hull.

• According to behaviourist school, psychology is a purely experimental branch of natural science.

 The objectives of psychology which is to elaborate, control and predict behaviour.

• The important tenends of behaviouism are :-
1. Psychology is a science of stimulus and response. It is concerned with the study of receptors (sense organs) and affectors (muscles and nerves).
2. The chief task of psychology is to study overt or observable behaviour that can be measured scientifically.
3. Behaviour is the response of some environmental stimulus. It is guided by senses and the behaviour can be explained in terms  of the association between stimulus and response.
4. Environmental forces are very much important in determining one’s behaviour, and one’s personality also shaped by environmental forces.
5. All behaviour are learned one in association or connection with environment.

Contribution education
1. Programmed learning – the learning materials can be programmed  in certain way, and it can be presented to the learned in accordance with his interest, time and pace.
2. The role of reinforcement – any behaviour can be strengthened and weakened by positive and negative reinforcement.
3. Shaping and behaviour modification program which contributed a lot in dealing with backward and maladjusted children in the classroom.

Limitations
1. Human behaviour is so complex which can’t be shaped only with simple stimulus response connection.
2. Behaviorism focused only overt behaviour and neglect the covert behaviour.
3. behaviorism gave high importance to environmental aspects and neglect the hereditary aspects.

Cognitive school
Cognitive school came int exists by criticizing the ideas of stimulus-response connection put forwarded by behaviorism.

They said that if behaviour is the product of stimulus response connection, the behaviorist couldn’t explained what happens in the brain between stimulus and response. This school give answer to these questions.

• The idea of cognitive psychology put forward by Ulric Neisser (1967) in his bool Ulric Neisser.
• High level mental processes are the subject matter of cognitive psychology. Such as
- Thinking process
- Science of memory
- Phases of concept of concept formation
- Problem solving abilities
- Language acquisition abilities
- Decision making abilities

Cognition means the active mental process involved in information processing. So all the above mentioned aspects are involved in cognition as well as information gathering.

In another way cognition is thinking.
Man can think as well as think about thinking.

Human mind doesn’t directly collect all the experiences from his environment, but he can able to compare new experiences with the already existing one, able to analyses the similarities and dissimilarities, and able to reconstruct the old one and elaborate it in a novel way.
Contribution to education
1. Thinking stratigies in learning
2. Critical pedagogy
3. Problem solving techniques
4. Meta cognition
5. Memory enhancing techniques.
Limitation
1. Avoid to explain habit formation.

School of humanism
• Chief proponents of humanism are carl Rogers, Abhraham Maslow
• Maslow arranged the needs of man in a hierarchy and at the top most level he put the need of self actualization and at lower level put the primary needs.
• Carl Roger put a new approach in the field of counseling –client centered counseling – that give a new direction in the field of abnormal psychology and educational activities.
• According to humanism, man is the only responsible one in all his activities and his life. The unconscious and the environmental factors have not any role at all.
• By self analysis and self recognition he can able to mould or modify his attitudes, behaviour at any time into a creation and appreciable manner.
• According to humanism, development means man be a loveable, self reliable and self worthy. Growth means the the process of formation of values, and that values leads his life to a meaning way.
• Five basic perspectives of humanism are :-
1. Man as a man, supersedes the sum of his parts( his physical surroundings)
2. Man has his being in a human context. (in all situation man has his own beingness.
3. Man has awareness
4. Man has choice
5. Man is intentional.

Gestalt school
• originated in Germany
• founder Max Wertheimer
• other experts in this school –
Koflka
Kohler
Lewin
• Gestalt – German name  meaning  configuration or organized whole.
• Gestalt psychology emphasized the role of configuration or organization in the perceptual field.
• It highlight the role of insight and understanding in learning.
Fundamental tenands of gestalt psychology
1. The whole is significant and greater than the part. The whole which determines the behaviour of its parts.
2. An individual perceives a thing as a whole and not bothered about the mere collection of its components or elements.
3. Perception always involves a problem of organization
4. Learning takes place as a result of organization of the perceptual field by the learner in a meaning ful and intellectual way.
Contribution to education
1. Gestalt psychology emphasized the importance of presenting the subject matter as a whole in the classroom which makes the learning more effective and meaningful.
2. The application of gestalt principles found in curriculum construction, organization of syllabus, scheme of studies, work plan etc.
3. Holistic method of teaching and evaluation, insight learning etc. are derived from this school.
4. Gestalt emphasized the learning of generalization, laws, principles and theories enable the students to apply their acquired knowledge in new situation.
limitation.
1. Ignore learning beyond perceptual experiences.
2. Failed to explain the strengthening of behaviour through practice.
3. Failed to explain how previous experience influence learning.
4. Failed to explain trail and error learning.