Children’s agency is the process through which children intentionally act and transform the current situation they live in and themselves. In this chapter, the life experiences of three Chinese children (six to twelve years old) during the first peak of the COVID-19 pandemic from February to May in 2020 are used as empirical examples to illustrate the unfolding of children’s agency. Adopting cultural-historical activity theory as a theoretical framework, this study argued that despite the constraints on physical movement imposed by the pandemic, these children responded with strong manifestations of agency by relying on a wide range of mediational means. The results support Vygotsky’s dialectical claim, according to which social crises may trigger creative human development. The study contributes to the Vygotskian literature on agency, with the Chinese cases demonstrating that human agency, as a process of undertaken efforts, is aimed at finding equilibrium in times of uncertainty.

Studies of agency are crucial if we are to grapple with pressing societal and environmental problems. Relevant conceptual and methodological solutions are needed to make alternative futures possible. This chapter outlines a broad position from which the subsequent contributions to this edited volume depart: one that recognises the urgency of agency and the value of cultural-historical perspectives in breaking away from problematic notions that frame agency as a matter of individuals pitted against the social, or in which individual actions lose their social contingency. Elaborating agency as a matter of struggle where individual and social are in dialectic relations, the chapter focusses on motives, mediation and motion. Within a broader and still-evolving cultural-historical framework, these motifs offer a distinctive way to deal with the challenges of conceptualising and facilitating agency, one which brings alternative futures into the realm of the possible by linking agency with learning and development.

In order to theorise the pleasure of thinking, this book builds on sociocultural psychology. Chapter 4 first goes back to Lev Vygotsky’s propositions on thinking, which open possible ways to address affects in thinking. In the second part, it explores the work of three contemporary theoreticians, all building a semiotic cultural psychology: Jaan Valsiner, who has developed the Vygotskian heritage into a new and creative semiotic cultural psychology, notably drawing on Charles Peirce and open dynamic system theory; Sergio Salvatore, whose semio-dynamic approach also draws on psychoanalysis; and Yair Neuman, who pursues this dialogue with biology and the sciences in his computational cultural psychology. These innovative, albeit demanding, approaches will give us the elements to build a more integrative theoretical framework in the next chapter.

Chapter 2 develops the idea that language operates as an inner tool, enhancing cognition. The first part focuses on inner speech, and the second on language as a way to access meaning. I describe inner speech and outline the history of the concept focusing on the traditions started by Vygotsky and Baddeley. I describe the main methods to investigate it, from questionnaires to experiments, the debate on whether inner speech involves articulation, and its functions for memory and metacognition. I then illustrate inner speech’s neural bases and evidence that different kinds of inner speech exist. In the second part, I discuss how embodied/grounded, distributional, and hybrid views intend meaning. Language might work as a shortcut to access meaning and enhance our cognition, providing an efficient way to access simulations, respond to contextual challenges, and, more generally, a new way of being in the world.

Chapter 1 introduces collective intelligence (CI) as an academic concept. At a basic level, CI extends the conception of intelligence from an individual to a group level. Pierre Lévy formulated the modern version in 1994, when he described the invention of the Internet as a new universally distributed intelligence. Today, CI covers many different areas, but most definitions are vague and inconsistent across academic disciplines. Studies address collective problem solving in both small and large groups. At a micro level, researchers have identified a general group intelligence factor that is relevant for performance in small groups. At a macro level, studies of large groups have focused on different types of self-organization, including both stigmergy and swarm coordination. In addition, diversity examines CI as a core feature, both from the perspective of the “many wrongs principle” and the “many eyes principle.” Furthermore, the chapter provides a description of the book’s theoretical approach, building on Vygotsky and the inclusion of both biological and cultural-historical perspectives. The section on the methodological approach explains the data collection process, and the use of top solver perceptions of their participation in online innovation contests.

The play Macbeth has traditionally been interpreted through mainstream psychological concepts that are reductionist and dispositional. That is, characteristics within Macbeth, such as his “ambition,” seem to explain the play. From another perspective, this play is a thought experiment on the power of scaffolding, constructed around Macbeth through various agents (mainly the Three Witches and Lady Macbeth). Vygotsky’s concept of scaffolding is applied to interpreting the play Macbeth, through a distinction between “M” (”Micro”) and “E” (”Extended”) components of personalty. “M” personality refers to the intrapersonal, fixed, causal agents that are assumed in mainstream psychology to cause certain behavior patterns. “E” personality refers to the contextual factors that shape behavior. The play Macbeth represents a thought experiment demonstrating the power of “E” personality.

In Chapter 1, we present an overview of Vygotsky’s cultural-historical activity theory (CHAT), including an explanation of how regulatory processes arise from the routine practices of social life. As part of this overview, we provide an explicit definition of cultural practices. To elaborate how a practice perspective is beneficial for understanding behavioral regulation, we describe how basic elements of an activity theoretic framework capture defining elements of a social practice. This framework offers a useful model for conceptualizing and observing how social practices come into existence and bring/create contextual resources that influence behavioral regulation. These resources are contextually embedded and include such elements as cultural tools, sign systems and symbols, goal-directed activities, and tasks. To better understand how regulatory processes emerge from participation in a community’s valued activities, we offer definitions of self-, other-, and co-regulation from a practice perspective.