Affordances theory and children’s agency in outdoor contexts: a review of the literature

Abstract

The purpose of this paper is to examine the connections that exist in the international literature over the past decade between affordances theory and agency in early childhood education in the outdoor settings. A scoping review of 46 contributions was conducted to highlight the existing relationships between the two theories, which revealed the presence of different interpretations of affordance theory, as well as the presence of possible declinations of the notion of agency, particularly in the outdoor educational contexts. The search for connections showed that more recent declinations of affordances theory, particularly those that consider context from a sociocultural perspective, proved to be of a particular interest, as they include more or less explicitly the notion of agency in the reflection. In addition, the literature review has shown that outdoor educational contexts prove to be particularly interesting because they support the actualization of affordances, and thus the expression of the agency that children have: the complexity, multiplicity and variability of invitations for actions present in outdoor contexts, suggest multiple possibilities for use and lend themselves to accommodate different interpretations. In this type of contexts, each child is configured as an actor in his or her own educational experience.