2. • William James the father of psychology in USA
is regarded as one of the pioneer of functional
school of psychology.
• He is strongly influenced by Darwin theory
and his own interest in anatomy. He adopted a
biological approach to study the mind.
• He declared that something was wrong in
Wundt and Titchners theory.
• He claimed that there is not way to seprate
thoughts, feeling and ideas and broken
experience into elements.
3. • He considered the mind to be the recent
development in evolutionary process, the
function of mind is to advocate man's
adjustment to his environment.
• Consciousness is continuous unity and mind
continuously adopt environment by applying
functional abilities such as: revising, starting,
stopping experiences.
• Habits are the function of nervous system.
5. • When we repeat an activity number of times,
our nervous system are altered so that the
next time we engage in it we do so
automatically without much conscious
thoughts.
6. Merits and contributions to Education
• By applying functionalism in curriculum we can
conclude that only those things should be thought to
the children which they could apply in every day life.
• It less emphasis on subject matter and more emphasis
on students needs. It is known as learner centered
approach.
• It introduced scientific enquiry and systematic data
collection methods “ questionnaire, mental tests”
rather then introspection.
• Opened the way of study of psychology in terms of
adjustment of organism to his environment.
