Expansive Learning and Transformative Agency for Equity and Sustainability: Formative Interventions in Six Continents

This double symposium brings together activity-theoretical formative intervention research conducted in six continents. The aim is to illuminate and examine the common threads, important differences, and new challenges of formative intervention studies to address “wicked problems” in different cultural, political, and economic contexts. Formative interventions facilitate expansive learning and systemic transformation led by local stakeholders in organizations and social movements. The formative intervention methodology is based on the principles of double stimulation and ascending from the abstract to the concrete. Its most well-known application is the Change Laboratory method. Formative interventions generate and support expansive learning and transformative agency. The current global crises of climate change, poverty and deepening inequalities are giving rise to what is called fourth generation activity theory for tackling fateful challenges by building heterogenous multi-activity coalitions. The symposium will present the theoretical and pedagogical challenges and possibilities in Change Laboratories and other formative interventions to develop just and sustainable solutions to global crises.