Abstract:

The relationship between a person and the environment is somewhat fundamental, especially at a time when awareness of the consequences that human actions have had (and are still having) on Earth is widespread. The increasing urgency to trace sustainable solutions in the person-environment relationship entails an essential search for alternative possibilities and creative actions, and these should be promoted from the education of children. Therefore, creativity and outdoor education are the central themes of the present study with the aim of finding a possible way of putting them into relation with one another. A review of the literature over the past 10 years has identified some common elements between creativity and outdoor education. It emerges that the theory of affordances (Gibson, 1979) could be the bond between them because it could be the theoretical framework in which educational research could fit. Starting with the “classic” definition and theory of affordances (Ibid.), an interpretation of it from the field of outdoor education research (Broberg, Kyttä, & Fagerholm, 2013; Heft, 1998; Waters, 2017; Kyttä, 2003, 2004) and from creativity research as well (Glăveanu et al., 2016; Glăveanu 2012, 2015) are identified in order to find where there are overlaps and points of intersection. From the two parallel analyses, a clear similarity and convergence of perspectives within a sociocultural framework emerge. Both fields of research have the theory of affordances as the key element from which to understand and interpret subjects’ actions within a specific context by identifying the constant characteristics that came into play. The analysis proposed by this contribution effectively aims at explaining this possible bond from the extension of the reflections on outdoor affordances (Waters, 2017) to the space they offer to the individual’s creative action, unfolding “a process of perceiving, exploiting, and “generating” novel affordances during socially and materially situated activities” (Glăveanu, 2012, p. 192). Between what the individual would, could and should have the possibility of doing, areas of opportunity accommodate diverse forms of creativity such as insight, creative problem-solving or falling outside current sociocultural norms of action (ibid.). This area considers creativity as a dynamic process that crosses the individual, the social environment, acting concretely and materially (Glăveanu, 2015). The present study shows that addressing attention to the person-environment relationship means understanding and educating to the world of possibilities, but also guiding the children’s actions with and in the world in a creative way; this would exchange the no-longer-sustainable actions with seeking out new possibilities.

Keywords:

affordance, creativity, outdoor education, primary education, relationship.