This study promoted professional learning and agency through a pragmatic formative intervention. Participants sought to change professional practices in classrooms in response to critical reflection on pedagogic practices and wider social concerns. Australian researchers collaborated with teachers and teacher educators from Nepal, informed by cultural-historical activity theory (CHAT). Change Laboratory methods identified a contradiction between heavy curriculum content and pedagogies that were regarded as educationally desirable and socially just. Participants developed eight principles to help teachers enact high-quality, inclusive pedagogies. One group linked this to the idea of MicroProjects, a solution for time-pressed teachers that could embody all eight principles. They worked with teachers in a nearby school to develop and implement MicroProjects across the Grade 1-12 curriculum. The paper traces a cycle of expansive learning actions, revealing how committed, activist research methods promoted teacher professional learning and agency in challenging contexts of the Global South, shifting from "what is" towards "what ought to be."