Teachers’ transformative agency in a Change Laboratory in a Finnish elementary school

The emergence and evolution of teachers' transformative agency and its connection to addressing systemic contradictions remains little studied. Drawing from cultural-historical activity theory and the theory of expansive learning, we investigated how emerging transformative agency during a Change Laboratory intervention helped Finnish school teachers address problems of schoolwork, stemming from the educational system's underlying contradictions and aggravated by a curriculum reform. Our results point to the significance of transformative agency as a key element of collective change efforts, intertwined with dialectical development, and a powerful driver for renewing school leadership and collaborative practices from the bottom up. • Teachers can agentively resolve problematic and paralyzing situations in their daily work. • Emerging and evolving transformative agency is crucial for addressing systemic contradictions in work activity. • Change Laboratory intervention facilitated practice renewal in a Finnish elementary school teacher community. • Via transformative agency, teachers enacted educational change from the bottom up amidst a curriculum reform. • Evolution of transformative agency resulted in the creation of new teamwork and leadership practices.