Understanding and promoting agency are crucial to addressing urgent social problems of our time. Through agency, we can take transformative steps toward the future that ought to be. This book shows how contemporary conceptualizations from cultural-historical activity theory can inform research and practice that fosters positive change. At the core of this book's novel approach to agency and transformation are three motifs: motives, mediation, and motion. These take inspiration from the original work of Vygotsky and subsequent generations of scholarship, enabling us to understand agency in ways that recognize the social and cultural aspects of agency without losing sight of individuals' contributions to changing their own lives and the lives of others. Referring to connections between learning, pedagogy, and agency, the chapters address power, freedom, and the future in contexts including adolescence, school exclusion, children's activism, Indigenous communities, environmental activism, homelessness, childbirth, and young people during the COVID-19 pandemic.

'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
'This remarkable insurgent book dares to propose the viable unheard of – a Freirean utopic and revolutionary form of constituting agency. Presenting agency both as a concept and as a form of acting, this work interweaves chapters that address a variety of contexts committed to social and ecological justice.' Fernanda Liberali, Pontific Catholic University of São Paulo, Brazil
'A rich book and a valuable contribution to CHAT, worthy of critical appraisal.' Bert Van Oers, Vrije Universiteit, the Netherlands

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.