Affordances & Misaffordances

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.

Bibliography

Beatty, Ken. Teaching & researching: Computer-assisted language learning. Routledge, 2013.

Jonassen, David H., ed. Handbook of research on educational communications and technology. Taylor & Francis, 2004. 295.

McLoughlin, Catherine, and Mark JW Lee. "Social software and participatory learning: Pedagogical   choices with technology affordances in the Web 2.0 era." ICT: Providing choices for learners and learning. Proceedings ascilite Singapore 2007. 2007.