Reflections at the intersection between environments that enable and children’s agency

Scollan & Farini (2021) state that both enabling environments and environments that enable acknowledge children’s capability to construct their own social worlds; however, environments that enable position children as the enabled but also as the enabler, stakeholders and authors of their own learning within the context of early years educational practice. The ethos and practice of environments that enable recognise the child as an autonomous producer of knowledge and support the child in the expression of that knowledge (Rinaldi, 1998; 2005; Pahl, 2007; Edwards et al., 2011; Edwards et al., 2016).
Scollan & Farini's article in OMEP (2021) recognise 'that marks a difference between enabling environments and environments that enable? The main difference is a shift in the energy that fuels the environment, from adults’ decision-making (enabling environments) to relationships and interactions (environments that enable), where a variety of contributions and positions are woven together to create a well-organised, planned, safe and stimulating context of mutual learning. Environments that enable do not depend on the action of adult demiurges. Rather, what enables is the living amalgamation of spaces, people, identities, emotions, communication and shared experiences. Environments that enable are more than the adult and more than the child, they are contexts for intent, agendas and interests. Environments that enable have a ‘more than’ affordance and value. More than the child, more than the adult and more than the resources: they are networks of interactions structured by expectations of personal expressions that favours trust and active participation as persons rather than roles, generating dialogic forms of education'.