Functionalism Vs Positivism

The existing research traditions that I have looked at to outline are Positivism, Critical Theory and Functionalism. In Positivism the discipline origins are rooted in philosophy, poetry, social science and natural science. Auguste Comte was seen as a founding father in Philosophy, sociology and positivism. Positivism came about post French revolution and Comte saw it as a new social order to remedy to what had just happened in the French revolution. Its basis lies in the sciences, looking at scientific methods to uncover laws and study society. It was a way of understanding based on science. Comte wrote a series of text published between 1830 – 1842 “The Course in Positive Philosophy”. Positivism was seen as observing the circular dependence

Used in statistical analysis this is very useful in educational research nowadays as it is based on figures, feedback, statistics about growth in educational systems, in the evaluation of assessments, level of competency across educational standards and comparative studies with different education systems. Qualitative research methodology focuses more on an emphasis on understanding, but is useful as well to education, as it uses observation and communication with participants as well as analysis of

This could be an age old problem but it certainly isn’t a comfortable one. In terms of variety of learner abilities and levels I am not referring to the obvious half and half or majority vs minority but actually multiple ability groups all within one class. We can ask ourselves: how is this happening? Why is this happening? Who is responsible and what can be done to amend it. Lots of questions to be answered, I will for now just refer to the how and why. At the high school where I have encountered the problem learners are sourced from many different schools, there are no traditional feeder schools in the area. Due to that fact, we can see many learners coming into the school from areas which are much further away from the school and areas that do not maybe have a similar culture to that of the school. It has become increasingly apparent that learners coming from primary school have not learned all the content that is required as a basis and starting point for high school. Leaving them ill prepared and often confused and lost, reasons for the situation are unknown as such, learners could of easily not paid attention, did not understand or that section of the syllabus had been omitted as something else seemed more important at the time. Whatever the case may be the fact of the matter is learners sit in class with an maybe an idea of what’s happening, slight