Agency and Transformation

Nick Hopwood is Professor of Professional Learning at the University of Technology Sydney, Australia and Extraordinary Professor at Stellenbosch University, South Africa. He studies how learning contributes to positive change, using and developing cultural-historical theory in the process. He was awarded an Honorary Doctor of Medicine for his work on professional learning in health care and has received numerous grants for studies working with families with vulnerable young children. Annalisa Sannino is Professor at the Faculty of Education and Culture at Tampere University, Finland. She also serves as Distinguished Research Fellow at Monash University, Australia and Visiting Professor at Rhodes University, South Africa and University West, Sweden. She studies agency and learning for equitable and sustainable transformations by means of cultural-historical activity theory and formative interventions.

'This edited volume introduces three interrelated motifs of motives, mediation, and motion to open a dialogue into the struggle between individual and social conceptions of agency and transformation. Highly respected contributors discuss fascinating studies and theorisations, which collectively showcase a diversity of interpretations and give new directions for research.' Marilyn Fleer, Monash University, Australia

• 1. Motives, mediation and motion: toward an inherently learning- and development-oriented perspective on agency Nick Hopwood and Annalisa Sannino; 2. Toward a power-sensitive conceptualization of transformative agency Annalisa Sannino; 3. The tasks of reality and reality as the task: connecting cultural-historical activity theory with the radical scholarship of resistance Anna Stetsenko; 4. A relational view of a future-oriented pedagogy: sustaining the agency of learners and teachers Anne Edwards; 5. From future orientation to future-making: toward adolescents' transformative agency Yrjö Engeström, Pauliina Rantavuori, Piia Ruutu and Maria Tapola-Haapala; 6. Excluded lives: questions of agency and transformation in practices of exclusion from school Harry Daniels, Ian Thompson and Alice Tawell; 7. Children's and youth's civic projects and responsible agency Jaakko Hilppö and Antti Rajala; 8. Decolonizing agency: future-making with indigenous communities Aydin Bal and Aaron Bird Bear; 9. Unpacking social articulation of agency: vexed questions for responsive professional action Prabhat Rai; 10. The emancipatory nature of transformative agency: mediating agency from below in a post-apartheid South African land restitution case Heila Lotz-Sisitka, Reuben Thifhulufhelwi, Charles Chikunda and Maletje Mponwana; 11. Choice in childbirth, agency and collective action: caesarean sections and birth plans in Brazil Denise Yoshie Niy and Carmen Simone Grilo Diniz; 12. Transformative agency by double stimulation in an ecological agroforestry association from Brazil: reflections from a change laboratory intervention Osni Arturo Francisco Junior, Manoel Flores Lesama and Marco Antonio Pereira Querol; 13. Transformative agency and the cultivation of innovations in frontline homelessness work Hannele Kerosuo and Esa Jokinen; 14. Children's agency during the COVID-19 pandemic in China Ge Wei; 15. Agency as the direction and reach of actions: a theoretical outline Nick Hopwood.