Saturday morning crashed out of the barrier and whilst my head was racing from the night before, I was off to a slow start.
This is when the text came through: Bike ride 9am?
Some traditions die hard – COVID isolation can do its best to kill off some good habits, but not this time. The problem was, I was on a boat and no way near my bike. I was alerted to this affordance in my ecology – but unable to take action. I didn’t have the agency to take action. I did not have the power to get home in time for the bike ride. There was an exception to my ability to go riding.
The more I play with this theory, the more sense it makes. It is like a theory of gravity – like, derrr, of course gravity sux, or that the world is round, or that trauma has an adverse affect on the brain in early childhood or that little atoms make up everything, or that bias exists as part of human nature.
However, just because the bleeding obvious is bleeding well obvious, it does not mean that we accept or except it without reason or theory.
So recap – Affordance Theory – a theory of learner agency.
- Teachers curate a learning ecology populated with artefacts. (after Gibson and Gibson)
- Learners are attuned to the affordances of these artefacts. (Gibson and Gibson)
- Learners take action with the affordances to create new artefacts. (after Giddens and Bandura)
Of course, in a learning ecology it is not just the kids who are learners – adults are as well.
Example 1:
- The school adult learning culture is defined by a common language and practices around what it means to be a teacher here. ie: the Language and the Practices are the artefacts.
- Teachers identify that belonging to this group is beneficial and can be attained through using the language and practices. ie: The Aglile Schools processes and Micro Credentialing through Walkthroughs structure.
- Teachers develop a portfolio of recognised micro-credentials that improve learning for children and add to the culture of the learning ecology.
Remember that this is a theory of learner agency – how it comes to be that people MIGHT (after Rom Harre and Positioning Theory) act in a particular way.
Example 2
- The class have been learning about Australian currency. Our teacher puts a ‘shop’ in the corner of the classroom complete with stuff to buy and ‘money’ to pay for it.
- Some children see the shop, complete with coins and notes and items to sell. They start play acting ‘shops’. Mimicking the language and practices demonstrated in the lesson and in every day life.
- The children rehearse this with other students – making their own shop front and a bank and internalise the language and learning that has happened. They demonstrated the desired language and concepts that the teacher was intending for the students to learn. ( and some didn’t, therefore demonstrating the what these students need for their learning).
Example 3
- Students work with a child centred disaster risk reduction university researcher to learn about bushfire risk.
- They recognise the absence of student voice in policy formation and safety messaging
- They co-construct a manifesto that policy writers and emergency services can use to develop future artefacts.
These are three really diverse ways through which we can view what has afforded the agency students and teachers have taken.
We curate artefacts in the learning ecology.
Learners perceive / are attuned to the affordances of the artefacts.
Learners use their agency to activate those affordances
New artefacts are the product of this action.
Of course, this is not rocket science. It is significantly more complex that that. Oh the variables!
Anyway, to wrap this up. We need to accept that this is not a learning theory, not an explanation of why people do what they do. It is a theory about how structure and agency and artefacts in a learning ecology can harvest all sorts of exceptional actions.