Structuralism

Structuralism is a conceptual and methodological approach to describing and analyzing a variety of objects of inquiry including, for example, cultures, economics, language, literature, mythologies, politics, and societies. A structuralist analysis assumes that these objects of inquiry can be characterized by underlying structures conceived as systems of interrelated parts and that they can be defined (at least in part) by relationships among these constitutive elements. Structuralist assumptions (concerning both the existence of underlying structures and the methods by which they should be analyzed) developed within what we now tend to label “Continental” (that is, non-Anglophone European) philosophymuch of it French during the early decades of the 20th century, but the influence of structuralism on both Continental and Anglo-American scholarship became much more prominent after World War II.

From the late 1940s through the 1970s (and to a diminished extent beyond), structuralist thought had a significant and explicit purchase on disciplines such as anthropology, cognitive development, literary criticism, mathematics, political science, and sociology. In retrospect, we can also discern implicit structuralist assumptions in the literatures of educational research and curriculum inquiry during this period. For example, two of the most influential curriculum texts in the immediate postWorld War II era were Ralph Tyler's 1949 Basic Principles of Curriculum and Instruction and Benjamin Bloom and colleagues' 1956 Taxonomy of Educational Objectives. Neither of these texts proselytizes for structuralism nor do they cite structuralist literatures, but both texts appear to be replete with structuralist assumptions [Page 818]and to invoke structural principles in their reasoning. Exposing, naming, and criticizing the structuralist assumptions that continue to pervade contemporary curriculum texts, discourses, and practices has largely fallen to scholars who adopt poststructuralist positions.