This chapter builds on the groundbreaking cultural-historical work on development and pedagogy of the founding fathers, in particular Vygotsky and Galperin, to argue for a caring relational pedagogy which enables the development of agentic learners in elementary schools and beyond. Three relational concepts, relational expertise, common knowledge and relational agency underpin this pedagogy, which involves educators in being clear to children about what needs to be worked on and learnt, while also interacting in ways that are sensitive to children’s motive orientations. In this way educators can nurture the agency of children as they engage with the demands in school practices and agentically take forward their social situations of development. The arguments are illustrated with examples of research from Australia, Canada, Denmark, Finland, India, Norway and the UK. The Norwegian study, for example, shows how teachers worked relationally with chronically shy children to enable them to engage in the flow of classroom life and sustain their own capacity to take forward their social situations of development. The Canadian example employs these relational ideas with adolescents as a reminder that a caring approach to the unfolding of learner agency is not limited to school age children.