The authors’ goal is to seek to understand the factors that affect changes in the teachers’ identities. The authors report on a study of teachers engaged in collaborative action research (CAR) to improve their implementation of digital photography in their teaching. The research design combines the use of ethnographic methods, participatory evaluation methods and action research. The authors use cultural–historical activity theory to understand why the data suggest that there was little change in the teachers’ identity by the end of the first cycle of action research, while those who participated in both the initial action research and the CAR group had a change in their identities.