Forward anchoring in teacher agency: Transforming teaching activity through a Change Laboratory

Teacher agency is critical to transforming classroom practice, yet its development in resource-constrained Global South contexts remains underexplored. This study examines how science teachers in Ghana engaged in forward anchoring within a Change Laboratory intervention to negotiate conflicts of motives between curriculum coverage and student-centred teaching. Six teachers participated in six sessions over three months. Drawing on transformative agency by double stimulation (TADS), four forward anchors were identified: improvised learning materials, a lesson-planning template, collaborative learning activities, and decoupling student engagement from material resources. These collectively elaborated second stimuli mediated the development of transformative agency as teachers reworked pedagogical possibilities within material and institutional constraints. Resistance contributed to this process by prompting contestation and refinement of emerging anchors. The findings extend TADS by clarifying the relationship between forward anchoring and transformative agency and suggest that professional learning should enable teachers to collectively develop contextually viable responses to pedagogical constraints.