I have just finished reading the article by Leo van Lier about ecology and affordances in teaching and learning (courtesy of Debra). It is simply amazing how something which seems to be well known, in this instance, LvL was talking about brain and cognition theories, can be transformed into a new and revolutionary idea. Van Lier, using Vygotsky’s Zon of Proximal Development (the ZPD) is talking about ecological linguistics as “a study of language as relations (of thoughts, action, power), rather than as objects (words, sentences, rules). “ According to van Lier the process of language learning is not a straight forward transmission of knowledge from a teacher to a student. Ecological educators see language and learning as relationships between learners and the environment, which gives both of them “affordances”. In every day life those are presented by opportunities for interactions and learning to the active, participating learner. The linguistic world to which learners have access provides plenty of demands and tasks which can be used by a good teacher for structuring meaningful activities. This approach avoids seeing learning as something that happens in person’s head. Rather it connects cognitive processes with social processes.

Leo van Lier “From input to affordance: Social-interactive learning from as ecological perspective”.