The Complex of School Change: Personal and Systemic Codevelopment

In this article we describe the mutual development of a school system in a poor rural county with one of its teachers. We recount the conditions leading to the coordination and writing of a Technology Literacy Challenge Fund proposal to ameliorate inadequate computer technology and initiate pedagogical change. We apply the expansive methodology of Cultural Historical Activity Theory to explicate personal and systemic developments. We examine the concept of activity identity by relating it to movement and action across activity systems, and by contrasting it to the notion of self-efficacy. We find a theoretical problem emerging with the delineation of people's activity into separate systems and scales of time.