The relation between writing in formal schooling and writing in other social practicesis a central problem in writing research (e.g., critical pedagogy, writing in nonacademic
settings, cognition in variable social contexts). How do macro-level social and political
structures (forces) affect micro-level literate actions in classrooms and vice versa? To
address these questions, the author synthesizes Yrjo Engestrom's systems version of
Vygotskian cultural-historical activity theory with Charles Bazerman's theory of genre
systems. The author suggests that this synthesis extends Bakhtinian dialogic theory by
providing a broader unit of analysis than text-as-discourse, wider levels of analysis than
the dyad, and an expanded theory of dialectic. By tracing the intertextual relations among
disciplinary and educational genre systems, through the boundary of classroom genre
systems, one can construct a model of ways classroom writing is linked to writing in
wider social practices and rethink such issues as agency, task representation, and
assessment.