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Chapter 5 - From Future Orientation to Future-Making

Towards Adolescents’ Transformative Agency

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 November 2023

By
Yrjö Engeström ,
Pauliina Rantavuori ,
Piia Ruutu  and
Maria Tapola-Haapala
Edited by
Nick Hopwood  and
Annalisa Sannino
Nick Hopwood
Affiliation:
University of Technology, Sydney
Annalisa Sannino
Affiliation:
Tampere University, Finland
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Summary

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.

Keywords

conflict of motivesdouble stimulationtransformative agencyadolescents’ future-makingChange Laboratoryformative interventioncultural-historical activity theory
Type
Chapter
Information
Agency and Transformation
Motives, Mediation, and Motion
 , pp. 107 - 138
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2023

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