Affordance theory provides a useful lens to explore the action opportunities that arisebetween users and technology, especially in education. However developments in the theoryhave resulted both in confusion and misapplication, due partly to issues related to affordancetheory’s ontology. This paper outlines two competing perspectives on affordances by Gibsonand Norman, before arguing that Latour’s theory of ‘actants’ provides a useful middle waybetween these competing positions. This ‘actant affordance’ provides new opportunities forundertaking educational technology research that focuses on the network of negotiationstaking place between actants (student, teacher, technology, pedagogy, etc.) rather thanstudying causality or simple binaries.Keywords: actants, affordances, Actor Network Theory, educational technology