{"id":935,"date":"2016-04-10T18:40:27","date_gmt":"2016-04-10T23:40:27","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.education4site.org\/blog\/?p=935"},"modified":"2017-01-19T05:09:13","modified_gmt":"2017-01-19T11:09:13","slug":"affordances-education-and-future-technologies","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.education4site.org\/blog\/2016\/affordances-education-and-future-technologies\/","title":{"rendered":"Affordances, education and future technologies"},"content":{"rendered":"

I see on my stats that this article is starting to get a lot of hits. This\u00a0is part of a work in progress. My thoughts on affordances are\u00a0evolving as I continue to explore the topic. A couple of things are slightly outdated in this article and need to be updated. I won’t change this article because it is and always will be representative of the evolution of my thinking. Instead, I’ve created an addendum for further reading here<\/a><\/strong>. There are two things that I address there:<\/em>
\n1. The persistence of affordances. I say here that an affordance exists as long as it is perceived. This is incorrect. If an affordance exists, it always exists.<\/em>
\n2. Norman’s and Gibson’s versions of affordances are two distinct concepts that, confusingly, go by the same name.<\/em>
\n\"software-tell-do\"<\/p>\n

People working in education are increasingly being urged to think ahead and consider how emerging and future technologies will affect education to better align educational practice, goals and policy with ongoing technological development. It should come as no surprise that I agree. In fact, it\u2019s what I do. But, how do we do this when the future is always at least a step or two ahead of us? It\u2019s certainly no simple task, but what I think it comes down to, essentially, is affordances. That is, we need to consider what the affordances of projected technological developments will be in, and beyond, educational environments.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Now, I can almost hear the faint murmur of your bewildered voices echoing through the intertubes; \u201cHow can we consider the affordances of technologies that don\u2019t exist? A technology that, as yet, is not doesn\u2019t afford anything!\u201d Such a retort would certainly be consistent with the way the term affordances has been used in relation to educational technology; i.e an affordance is a perceived property of an object. Without an object, as is the case with future technology (the object hasn\u2019t been created yet), there is nothing to perceive, hence there are no affordances.<\/p>\n

But there, I think, lies the evidence that we\u2019ve gone astray in regards to affordances. The way the term affordances has been defined in educational discourse is confining and not what James J. Gibson, who coined the term, had in mind. In this article I\u2019m going to dig into the origins and evolution of the term affordances to highlight the ways that it has been misconstrued and narrowed. Then I will present a definition that is better aligned with Gibson\u2019s original intended purpose and that, in my view, helps us to better understand the interaction between education and technology, both current and future.<\/p>\n

Istance & Theisens (2013) say that considering future implications for education requires equal parts critical analytical thinking and creative thinking. I couldn\u2019t agree more. What\u2019s more, when the two are combined with a clear understanding of the concept of affordances they help us construct realistic scenarios that allow us to engage with possible futures in meaningful and effective ways.<\/p>\n

This ended up being much longer than I expected and some readers may not be interested in all of it (although, as I wrote it, I felt it was all necessary to illustrate my point). So, I\u2019m going to put this right out in front: the TL;DR<\/a> and a table of contents:<\/p>\n

TL;DR – Affordances are not something that makers put into technologies, they are what users make of technologies in whatever environment\u00a0they may find themselves.<\/em><\/p>\n

Contents:
\nWhence the term affordances?<\/a>
\nIndirect vs. direct perception: Things are not always as they appear…<\/a>
\nNorman\u2019s affordances<\/a>
\nAffordances in action<\/a>
\nAffordances, education and future technologies<\/a>
\nConclusions<\/a><\/p>\n

<\/a>Whence the term affordances?<\/strong>
\nThe term \u201caffordances\u201d was first coined by Gibson in the late 1970s (1977; 1979). About 10 years later, Norman (1988) redefined it as a design concept. From there it made its way to instructional designers and has since been thoroughly appropriated into the educational technology lexicon. In fact it is often encountered today without being specifically defined, even in the most rigorous of scholarly writings. The implied assumption, presumably, is that everyone already knows what it means. What I will argue here, however, is that the way that the term has been used in discourse on educational technology has become so far removed from its original intended meaning, that the concept\u2019s utility is significantly limited to the point that it even obscures many affordances of current, not to mention future, technologies. I believe that the reason that this has happened is that the diffusion of the concept has been driven more by a need to make a point, rather than to enrich conceptual frameworks with the concept\u2019s originally intended complex and nuanced perspective on individuals\u2019 relationship with their environment.<\/p>\n

To start with, let\u2019s take a look at Gibson\u2019s and Norman\u2019s definitions of affordances. First, Gibson\u2019s (1979) classic, oft cited definition:<\/p>\n

\u201cThe affordances of the environment are what it offers the animal, what it provides or furnishes either for good or ill. The verb to afford is found in the dictionary, but the noun affordance is not. I have made it up. I mean by it something that refers to both the environment and the animal in a way that no existing term does. It implies the complementarity of the animal and the environment.\u201d (p. 56)<\/p>\n

Contrast that with Norman\u2019s (1988) definition:<\/p>\n

“…the term affordance refers to the perceived and actual properties of the thing, primarily those fundamental properties that determine just how the thing could possibly be used. […] Affordances provide strong clues to the operations of things. Plates are for pushing. Knobs are for turning. Slots are for inserting things into. Balls are for throwing or bouncing. When affordances are taken advantage of, the user knows what to do just by looking: no picture, label, or instruction needed.” (p.9)<\/p>\n

Gibson and Norman are both trying to describe a concept that refers to the ways that individuals relate to their environment. However, there are some key differences that suggest that the two are not thinking along the same lines:<\/p>\n