Most concepts serve temporary and partial purposes in an activity system. We might call them action-level concepts. But there are also concepts that become durable orientation bases for the entire activity, or even for coalitions of multiple activity systems. We might call those activity-level concepts. Cultural-historical activity theory offers a set of foundational ideas for the study and practical fostering of concept formation in the wild, particularly in the current phase of the fourth generation of activity theory. The emerging fourth generation of activity theory zooms on heterogenous activity coalitions aimed at resolving wicked societal problems, or runaway objects, and creating sustainable and equitable alternatives to capitalism. The foundational ideas may be condensed in two principles, namely the principle of double stimulation and the principle of ascending from the abstract to the concrete. The principle of double stimulation incorporates volition and agency as integral aspects into our understanding of concept formation in the wild. The principle of ascending from the abstract to the concrete leads to the distinction between empirical and theoretical concepts, to the idea of a germ cell as the starting point and core of a theoretical concept, and to the theory of expansive learning.

In cultural-historical activity theory, the move from orientation to action is connected to the experiencing of contradictions as personally significant conflicts of motives. Our study builds on the theory of transformative agency by double stimulation (TADS). We conducted a Change Laboratory intervention with adolescents to support them to work on their motive conflicts and to construct and implement projects they found significant. With the help of Sannino’s model, we analyse the evolution of students’ projects as efforts to move from mental future orientation to practical and material future-making. In our data, the conflict of motives and the creation of second stimuli emerged as the most critical steps in the TADS process. We argue that it is time to make the shift from studying young people’s future orientations as private mental phenomena to fostering and analysing future-making as material public actions that generate use-value and have an impact beyond the individual.

This chapter problematises questions of agency, transformation and motives in the context of the exclusion of young people from school. It addresses the question: in what ways might young people be agentic in processes of school exclusion and how might that agency be strengthened? In order to explore this question, the chapter draws on recent developments in cultural-historical theories of transformative agency by double stimulation and Bernsteinian insights on cultural transmission and pedagogy. Empirical data from an exploratory study of permanent school exclusions in a southern English city are used to illustrate the theoretical considerations on transformative agency that are emerging from a four-year multidisciplinary comparative study of exclusion, in all its forms, across the four jurisdictions of the UK. Data are also used to explore the concept of the categorisation of exclusions and in the context of understanding the possibilities for young people’s agency in exclusion.

We need theories that help us join the struggle for alternative futures. Cultural-historical approaches frame agency as something people do rather than something they have or sense. Building on this, I conceptualise agency in terms of the direction and reach of actions. Direction concerns movement from distinctive subject positionings towards desired endpoints. Reach concerns the extent of this movement. Direction and reach can be both outward (transforming the world) and inward (transforming the self). This acknowledges individuals’ contributions to changing their own lives and those of others without evacuating actions from the activities in which they are embedded. Motive, mediation, and motion are key to this. I illustrate these ideas in relation to existing research on young people’s environmental activism, a Latino boy in foster care, and a mother struggling to care for her infant child, as well as examples from prior research and other chapters in this volume.