What is an enabling environment – and who is doing the enabling?

Dr Angela Scollan              Professor Frederico Farini

Since 2012, the term enabling environment has been one of four themes of the Early Years Foundation Stage (EYFS), the core document that defines guidelines for pedagogical practice in English and Welsh Early Years settings.

An enabling environment is described as a rich, stimulating and safe space offering opportunities to play, to be, to learn and to explore both physically and mentally (DfE, 2021).

The EYFS describes the environment for play and learning in terms of the following three aspects: the emotional environment relating to atmosphere and feelings, the outdoor environment relating to accessible spaces and activities, the indoor environment relating to accessible spaces and activities. Environments that enable strive to be children-centred so that children are valued and encouraged to be independent, resilient, capable, confident and self-assured.            

However, the idea of enabling environment is not exempt from criticism. An interrogation of the concept of enabling environment reveals an adult-centric vision: adults are the ‘demiurges’ who construct the rich, stimulating and safe spaces where children find opportunities to play, to be, to learn and to explore both physically and mentally that are offered to them. Adults enable children through the environment. We are thus inviting an innovative discussion by introducing a new concept: environments that enable. Environments that enable is a concept that aims to flip the narrative underpinning the concept of enabling environments, in particular the position of children and adults in educational contexts.

Children as decision makers
The difference between enabling environment and environments that enable concerns the position of children. 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 them in the expression of that knowledge (Rinaldi, 1998; 2005; Pahl, 2007; Edwards et al., 2011; Edwards et al., 2016).

The concept of enabling environment describes a positive action by adults to transform a previously non-enabling environment, therefore emphasising the role of adults-as-enablers.   

The concept of environments that enable positions the environment, understood as the network of relationships and interactions, at the centre. It is that network of relationships and interactions that enables, with the active participation of children as authors of knowledges who are responsible decision-makers. 

An introduction to what environments that enable look like does not explain what they are. What is the image of children underpinning environments that enable? What are the characteristics of practitioner-children interactions in environments that enable? What are the characteristics of environments that enable?

Paraphrasing Freire’s distillation of progressive pedagogy, environments that enable are created with children, forchildren, from children for adults. The concept of environments that enable aligns with a culture of childhood that places particular emphasis on socialising children towards an understanding of their own competencies in planning, designing, monitoring and managing social contexts (Matthews, 2003) rather than towards the achievements of pre-determined outcomes, whether inscribed in curricula or not, states-of-development.

Environments that enable are physical and social spaces that promote decision-making and action, where children are empowered to be agents in their own learning. Sylva and colleagues’ influential report The Effective Provision of Pre-school Education (EPPE, 2004) does not explicitly discuss environments that enable. However, the characteristics of positive learning environments illustrated by the report relates the features of environments that enable: continuing dialogue that can be initiated either by the adults or the children, strong parent partnerships, and staff with up-to-date knowledge and understandings of how to combine care and education to respond to young children’s holistic needs.

Enabling environments vs environments that enable

In England, important policies and position papers such the revised Early Years Foundation Stage Framework (DfE 2021) and updated Development Matters recognise ‘enabling environments’ as indoor and outdoor spaces that nurture a sense of belonging, offer children risk-taking opportunities, encourage individual exploration and celebrate diversity and difference. However, environments that enable are more than that, because the position of children at their very foundations is one of children as enabler and constructors of knowledge for themselves and for adults.

What 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.

If environments that enable are interpreted as a form of communication rather than a set of resources, the distinction between indoor environments and outdoor environments vanishes. Either indoor or outdoor, an environment enables when children are not prevented from developing their ‘self’ holistically. Freedom, spaces, resources and well-thought-out opportunities need to be provided to ensure this (Maynard and Waters, 2007). Skilled and knowledgeable professionals can justify choice of resources, how and why environments enable and empower, how and why staff are deployed, and how progress and next steps are being questioned with children via dialogic interaction and reflection (Canning, 2014; Murray, 2017; Ofsted, 2017). The professional who is committed to the maintenance of environments that enable is an organiser of learning that is always ready to learn, a maestro who is prepared to be taken away from the music.

Child as teacher
Both indoor and outdoor spaces can be the substratum of the networks of interactions that we define environments that enable. What marks a difference is the positioning of the child as the unique child, who is at the same time a unique person, a learner, and a teacher before being a pupil.

Within environments that enable, children’s decision-making is not conditional on adults’ approval. Children’s choices, decisions and experiences do not wait for an adult’s legitimisation and they are not the consequence of adults’ planning and decision-making. Rather, they are building blocks of environments that enable.  

Children’s choices, decisions and experiences are embedded in practice and planning by education professionals who are both willing and able to listen to children’s unlimited and unique expressions.

However, the centrality of children’s empowerment and the willingness of the adults to trust children do not remove the need for a sound and safe management structure to make sure that any pedagogical strategy is fully understood, compliant with statutory regulations and implemented by all staff. In a nutshell: children deserve to be safe if they get it wrong.

Similar to any other effective educational environments, environments that enable need clear policies and channels of communication. Participatory forms of management, where leadership is exercised by different staff in different situations, is a defining characteristic of environments that enable from an organisational point of view.

The possibility to exercise leadership within the framework of the theory, methods and ethos of environments that enable is directed towards fostering professional creativity (Craft 2011; Nutbrown 2012, 2013; Moss 2016; Allen et al, 2019).

Staff are key to the success of any educational environment and must share, own and therefore they should be involved in developing the setting’s pedagogical vision, strategy and rationale (Pascal and Bertram, 2014; Allen et al, 2019). This is an organisational imperative: the reasoning behind why resources are chosen or made available to children and where staff are deployed must be shared with, and be understood by, all staff.  

If children are to be taken seriously as primary stakeholders in their education, as well as citizens who have a right to be consulted and heard, then avoiding the risk of trusting children’s decision making, creativity and social skills is a luxury that education should not, and the authors would say cannot, afford.

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