Ola Sayed
Ahmed
Professor
Dima Daioub
Integrating
Technology with Language Teaching
15 February
2015
Affordances & Misaffordances
Affordance is first used by the American
ecological psychologist James Jerome Gibson in his article "The Theory of
Affordances". He defined it as something that " cuts across the dichotomy of subjective-objective and helps
us to under-stand its inadequacy. It is equally a fact of the environment and a
fact of behavior. It is both physical and psychical, yet neither. An affordance
points both ways, to the environment and
to the observer". This term was then used by his wife Eleanor J. Gibson in
an educational context where environment was considered as an affordance to infant's
growth. The scope of this term broadened along time especially with the arrival
of web 2.0 and its tools in pedagogy. McLoughlin and Lee define affordance as
" an action that an individual can potentially perform in their environment
by using a particular tool. In other words, an affordance is a “can do”
statement that does not have to be predefined by a particular functionality,
and refers to any application that enables a user to undertake tasks in their environment,
whether known or unknown to him/her. For example, blogging entails typing and
editing posts, which are not affordances, but which enable the affordances of
idea sharing and interaction"(p. 3) .
Ken Beatty defined not only affordances
but also misaffordances as the following:"
(p. 50).
Thus, Affordances are the self-evident and mysterious properties of something
that allow an individual to use it in a way determined by the individual and
his/her environment.
However,
the definition of misaffordance that Beatty gave might look problematic
because flashing words -although they are meant to be read- are considered as affordance in the context of advertisement. Actually the word "intended" in the definition of misaffordance carries within it the subjectivity to a certain context. As a result an affordance in a certain context can be a misaffordance in another.
Smart phones are so celebrated nowadays.
Their affordances allow them to be considered as educational tools. They are
portable, allow interaction, can display different types of media, help
organizing tasks, access to internet, allow synchronic and asynchronic
communication, allow sharing info as well as files. However, apps'
notifications can be considered as
misaffordance because they distract a reading intention from an e-book. However, they are considered as affordance when the intention is social networking.
