Structuralism has independently developed across fields. Among the fields where structuralism is introduced are psychology, linguistics, and anthropology with the pioneering founders Wilhem Wundt, Edward Tichener, Ferdinand de Saussare, and Claude Levi-Strauss, respectively. Each of them has their own contribution to the field. The systematic movement of structuralism in psychology had started in Germany and was introduced by Wilhelm Wundt and popularized by Edward B. Titchener. Wundt, regarded as the ‘Father of Structuralism’, was a German physiologist and psychologist who pioneered the idea of structuralism (voluntarism as previously termed by Wundt). He supposed that, by classifying conscious experiences into analyzable small parts, mind could be broken down into structures for us to analyze and examine it (Kendra, 2020). His student, however, Titchener decided to popularize the ideas of structuralism by changing much of what his mentor had taught him; however, he retained and used the technique called introspection to understand the conscious mind. Titchener applied introspection in his study by means of observation and analysis. He believed that conscious experiences are difficult to control in an experiment as behavior is not. Ferdinand de Saussare was the greatest face of structuralism in linguistics. He posited that language is a structured system. This means that understanding language is based on its convention and structural rules –grammar. In anthropology, Claude Levi-Strauss pioneered structuralism and asserted that human thoughts have something to do with cultural phenomena. This implies that actions of individuals are governed by the structures of his or her thoughts.

1. Ryan B. Bernido
PhDMathEd Student
STRUCTURALISM IN
EDUCATION
PhD 302- Seminar in Educational Philosophy and Sociology

2. LEARNING
OBJECTIVES
a. determine the pioneers of
structuralism across
disciplines/fields,
b. define and explain structuralism
across disciplines/fields,
c. identify the dynamics of
structuralism, and
d. provide implications of
structuralism in education and
learning.

3. FOUNDERS OF STRUCTURALISM IN PSYCHOLOGY
STRUCTURALISM: FOUNDERS AND ITS BRIEF HISTORY, CONCEPTS AND DEFINITIONS
Wilhelm Wundt (1832-1920)
• German physiologist and psychologist
• “Father of Structuralism”
• introduced the idea of structuralism by founding the very
first laboratory devoted for the experimental psychology
in 1879 in Germany
• school of thought pioneered by Wundt is previously
known as voluntarism, defined as the process of
organizing the mind

4. FOUNDERS OF STRUCTURALISM IN PSYCHOLOGY
STRUCTURALISM: FOUNDERS AND ITS BRIEF HISTORY, CONCEPTS AND DEFINITIONS
Edward B. Titchener (1867-1927)
• English psychologist
• popularized his mentor’s schools of thought,
voluntarism, by creating a new version of it,
turning voluntarism (the process of organizing
the mind) into structuralism (the analysis of the
basic elements that constitute the mind)

5. FOUNDER OF
STRUCTURALISM IN
LINGUISTICS
Ferdinand de Saussare (1857-
1923)
• Swiss linguist
• His ideas on structure in language laid the
foundation for much of the approach to and progress
of the linguistic sciences in the 20th century
• proposed that languages were constructed of hidden
rules that practitioners ‘know’ but are unable to
articulate
STRUCTURALISM: FOUNDERS AND ITS BRIEF HISTORY, CONCEPTS AND DEFINITIONS

6. FOUNDER OF
STRUCTURALISM IN
ANTHROPOLOGY
Claude Levi Strauss (1908-
2009)
• French anthropologist
• studied the analysis of cultural systems
such as kinship and mythical systems in
terms of the structural relations among their
elements
• Lévi-Strauss’s structuralism attempted to
reduce the enormous amount of knowledge
about cultural systems to what he believed
were the fundamentals, the formal
relationships among their elements
STRUCTURALISM: FOUNDERS AND ITS BRIEF HISTORY, CONCEPTS AND DEFINITIONS

7. CONCEPTS AND
DEFINITIONS
theories across disciplines sharing a common assumption
that structural relationships between concepts vary between
different cultures/languages and that these relationships can
be usefully exposed and explored
STRUCTURALISM

8. CONCEPTS AND
DEFINITIONS
explores the relationships between fundamental principal
elements upon which some higher "structures" and
"structural networks" are built by which meaning is produced
within a particular person, system, or culture
STRUCTURALISM

9. Structuralism in
Psychology
• analyzing the adult mind or an evaluation of the
sum of experience from birth to the present
(analyzing simplest definable components;
finding the way in which these components fit
together in complex forms)
• sought to correlate the experiences to physical
events through introspection, self-reports (of
sensations), viewpoints, feelings, and emotions;
experiences should be evaluated as a fact, as it
exists without analyzing the significance or
value of that experience

10. Structuralism in
Linguistics
• Looking for meaning in the
relation between things,
rather than things in
isolation is main position
of structuralism in
linguistics.
• As an example, the color
“red”, “green” and “yellow”
means “stop”, “go”, and
“caution” in relation to
each other, that is when
related to the context of
traffic lights.

11. Structuralism
in Linguistics
• system of signs
constructed by
convention, relation, and
interaction not by
isolation
• Structuralism in language
has four distinctions as
posited by Ferdinand de
Sausarre.

12. Structuralism in
Anthropology
• analysis of culture viewed as systems in
terms of the structural relations among
the elements
• universal patterns in cultural systems are
products of the invariant structure of the
human mind –viewed as a repository of a
great variety of natural material, from
which it selects pairs of elements that can
be combined to form diverse structures

13. DYNAMICS OF STRUCTURALISM ACROSS FIELDS INTROSPECTION: STRUCTURALISM’S MAIN APPROACH IN PSYCHOLOGY

14. INTROSPECTION:
STRUCTURALISM’S MAIN
APPROACH IN PSYCHOLOGY
• a process that involves
looking inward to examine
one's own thoughts and
emotions
a. the use of “trained” or
practiced observers,
who could
immediately observe
and report a reaction;
and
b. the use of repeated
stimuli that always
produced the same
experience in the
subject and allowed
the subject to expect
and be fully attentive
to the reaction

15. TITCHENER’S
STRUCTURALISM
Titchener proposed 3 elementary states of
mind or consciousness; these are the
following:
• (a) sensations (sights, sounds, tastes),
• (b) images (components of thoughts),
and
• (c) affections (components of emotions)

16. DE SAUSSARE’S
STRUCTURALISM ON
LINGUISTICS
• Ferdinand de Saussare
had asserted that
language is a social
phenomenon, and a
structured system with
four distinctions as
follows:
a. synchronic and
diachronic,
b. langue and parole,
c. syntagmatic and
associative
(paradigmatic), and
d. signifier and signified.

19. Syntagmatic means relations
between words or smaller units
within a sentence or the
relations between elements
with a cultural context or
convention such as the traffic
light sequence in the preceding
texts.
Associative or pragmatic is the
relation between those
elements and what they mean
or the relationships of the
interchangeable units in a
language.

20. • Signifier is a word or symbol
that stands for something.
Signified is what the word
means; these two combined is
called Sign which De Saussare
believed to be conventional
and arbitrary, and that both
terms are psychological in
nature, implying that there is
no one-to-one relation
between the signifier and
signified.

21. LEVI-STRAUSS’
STRUCTURALISM
• In anthropology, structuralism focuses on the
effects of universal patterns in human thought on
cultural phenomena.
• In Levi-Strauss’ structuralism, there is an idea of
binary opposition such as "life vs. death,"
"culture vs. nature," or "self vs. other”.
Consequently, this idea means that each
individual concept has an opposite concept that
it is co-dependent on known as the unity of
opposites –no one of these ideas can exist
without the other.

22. LEVI-STRAUSS’
STRUCTURALISM
• culture is a system that can be
objectively and empirically
analyzed in terms of the
meaningful relations and contrasts
existing between minimal, paired,
or binary mental units

23. IMPLICATIONS
TO EDUCATION
AND LEARNING
• As teachers design his or her lessons,
difficult topics or broad topics can be
broken down into smaller and specific
topic to help learners understand the
concepts.
• In the design of curriculum and in the
learning competencies in basic education
of the Philippines, this can be related or
associated with the unpacking of learning
competencies where each learning
competencies are divided into more
specific learning objectives to facilitate
the logical sequence delivery of topics or
learning competencies.
• Upon unpacking the learning
competencies into learning objectives,
teachers can now easily design learning
tasks to achieve the unpacked learning
objectives leading to the desired learning
competencies.

24. IMPLICATIONS
TO EDUCATION
AND LEARNING
• Another implication of structuralism in education is the
idea of use of relationship between parts to understand
the whole. Structuralism in linguistics stated that the
relationship of words or convention of words constitutes
the understanding of language. Considering this idea
into the field of education, teachers must be able to use
language which when used and expressed becomes
understandable to learners.
• This means that teachers should avoid using language
that are vague and which is not conventionally
appropriate to the lesson; right choice of words must be
observed in the delivery of lesson. Construction of
lessons or materials should also be using structured
sentence which is easy to understand and is in the
context of the learners because as structuralism in
linguistics highlighted language is arbitrary, hence
meanings of words depend on the convention of the
society.

25. IMPLICATIONS
TO EDUCATION
AND LEARNING
• Further, the structuralism on
anthropology stated that human thoughts
and cultural phenomena has relationship
and interrelated. This means that learners
behave the way they think. This further
implies that teachers must be able to
consider the backgrounds of learners who
are misbehaving in the classroom to
understand them and give them appropriate
interventions. Teachers should not easily
judge the learners whose actions or
behaviors are against the school rules and
regulations, rather counsel him or her and
try to understand his way of thinking or
cognitive structure of the child.

26. Wrapping Up
1. Structuralism as a field had developed independently across disciplines.
2. Structuralism in psychology had been introduced by Wilhelm Wundt and Edward
Titchener. This school of thoughts mainly focused on understanding and processing the
mind by breaking it down into analyzable parts through the process of introspection.
3. Structuralism in linguistics as pioneered by Ferdinand de Sausarre posited that language
is a structured system having four distinctions as follows:
a. synchronic and diachronic,
b. langue and parole,
c. syntagmatic and associative (paradigmatic), and
d. signifier and signified.
4. Structuralism in psychology focused on the effects of universal patterns in human
thoughts to cultural phenomena as asserted by Claude Levi-Strauss.
5. Structuralism in education means reforms in teaching-learning process considering the
different ideas of structuralism across fields.

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