Friday 23 September 2011

AFFORDANCE!!!!!


What is it? 


Mary Law defines affordance as the "characteristics of the environment that are uniquely identified by the person based on their cognitive style, experiences and abilities" (Law, 1998,p.111).
Toby Hamilton explains that affordance is the interaction between an object and a person and the experiences they have within this interact (Hamilton, 2010).  
In both of these definitions the core of affordance is the persons experience of something or with something. From this my understanding is that no one persons understanding or feeling of affordance is the same and that everyone’s experiences of affordance is different. In class we discussed what affordance means to us and from this came ethics, connection, communication, aesthetics, spiritual and of course physical. I will choose one of these and use my chosen activity of soccer to help explain what affordance is.

Connections

Thursday nights mean its training night, I grab my boots bag, hop in the car and head to our training pitch. On the way my boots stink out the car because no matter how much you clean them and scrub them there's still that well worn smell of a hard fought 90min game of soccer from the Sunday just been. Once at the park I pull my gear out of the bag and start putting it on. First is the shin pads with the strategically places ankle guards, I always wear these because I’m reminded of a time when watching you tube clips of people playing soccer. The players I was watching weren’t wearing any shin pads and one guy got tackled quite hard and you could see his shin bone break and stick out in an unnatural position under the skin. Next are my socks and then my boots. Boots are so expensive especially if you want them to last more than one season, and then getting the right boot for your foot is a mission in its self because all the boots are in men’s sizes (hello women play the game as well). Though this year while I was boot shopping I saw there were three pairs of women’s boots and I saw able to find some in my size. I didn’t get them though because they were ugly and had small blades/sprigs.   

Reference list:

Hamilton, T. (2010). Occupations and places. In C. Christiansen & E. Townsend (Eds.), Introduction to occupation: The art and science of living (2nd ed.). Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson.

Law, M. (Ed.). (1998). Client centered occupational therapy. Thorofare, NJ: SLACK incorporated.




2 comments:

  1. Hey Megan Lee, this makes me understand the concepts of affordances and connections now because you have linked it really well to your activity! Im still cringing about the shin bone, Im not too good with bones being on the outside of the body Lol. Till next time, Cara

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  2. Hae Megan Leeee! Do you think that maybe those shoe makers don't make affordances for women playing soccer? Which affects your participation in the activity...making it a mission to find the right size and having to wear men's boots! I hope that makes sense :)Haha at the you tube clip..I think I've seen a similar one but with a kick boxer..Gross!!

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