This article explores teachers' learning from a Vygotskian perspective, which emphasises collaborative interaction and self-direction. The article describes case-studies of three senior teachers in socio-economically disadvantaged Egyptian primary schools where collaboration and self-direction were systemically discouraged. It analyses how, through a teacher development intervention, the teachers learned to use collaborative interaction to support their own learning and felt more creative, authoritative and powerful after being guided to exercise self-direction.