A sociocultural perspective on second language writing teacher cognition a vietnamese teacher’s narrative

A sociocultural perspective on second language writing teacher cognition: a Vietnamese teacher’s narrative Abstract Despite increased attention to social and historical dimensions in language teacher cognition research, the second language writing teacher cognition literature remains dominated by the cognitivist tradition that separates teachers’ beliefs from their practices To address this mismatch, this paper proposes to view second language writing teacher cognition through the lens of Vygotsky’s sociocultural theory, especially its genetic method and concept of mediation Based on these frameworks, the study aims to reveal the major shifts in a Vietnamese English language teacher’s cognition about second language writing and the mediating resources involved Following the narrative design, the participant’s professional life story was first constructed with data from a series of interviews and various national and institutional documents Her narrative was then subject to thematic analysis guided by the sociocultural theory concepts It was found that her cognition changes followed a complex, non-linear trajectory, and there were dialectical interrelationships between these shifts Moreover, these shifts were mediated by humans, concepts, and artifacts, whose influence was simultaneous and dialectical Via analytic generalization in case studies, the paper proposes two models to illustrate firstly the chronological developments and secondly the socially mediated and dialectical nature of second language writing teacher cognition Key words Second language writing; language teacher cognition; sociocultural theory; narrative inquiry; Vietnam A sociocultural perspective on second language writing teacher cognition: A Vietnamese teacher’s narrative Introduction The field of second language (L2) writing, which includes research on “second and foreign language writing and writing instruction” (Journal of Second Language Writing, 2018, p.1), has increasingly acknowledged the importance of studying teacher cognition (Belcher & Hirvela, 2018) This stems from the consensus that understanding teachers’ beliefs and practices is essential for effective teacher education (Lee, 2018) Studies in this subfield have revealed insights into teacher cognition about L2 writing pedagogy (Reichelt, 2009; Lee, 2008; Lee, 2014), feedback (Ferris, 2014; Guenette & Lyster, 2013; Junqueira & Payant, 2015; Min, 2013), and assessment (Crusan, Plakans, & Gebril, 2016) They have also shed light on factors that influenced teacher cognition such as teacher education programs (Gebhard et al., 2013; He & Prater, 2014; Lee, 2013; Xiao, 2014), previous learning experiences (Reichelt, 2009; Worden, 2015), and contexts (Lee, 2008) Despite their contributions as shall be elaborated in Section 2, many of the above papers remain largely informed by the cognitivist view which sees teacher cognition narrowly as “what teachers think, know and believe” (Borg, 2003, p.81) This situation is in sharp contrast to the broader field of language teacher cognition where studies have increasingly shifted towards views that account for the socially embedded nature of teacher cognition (Burns, Freeman, & Edwards, 2015) One such view regards language teacher cognition as “emergent sense making in action” (Kubanyiova & Feryok, 2015, p.436) Different from the cognitivist perspective, this definition is participation-oriented, or emphasizes the need to study “the contexts of participation in practice” (Kubanyiova & Feryok, 2015, p.438) in language teacher cognition research This participation-oriented view also connects rather than separates practices from beliefs and subsume both in the language teacher cognition ecology (Kubanyiova & Feryok, 2015) It is this participation-oriented view of language teacher cognition that the current article will adopt since it is more compatible with current trends in language teacher cognition scholarship (Burns et al., 2015) and allows for “the larger vision of language teacher cognition” (Kubanyiova & Feryok, 2015, p.437) Informed by this view and motivated by the need to bridge the gap between the L2 writing teacher cognition research and the broader field of language teacher cognition, this paper will adopt the sociocultural theory to examine a Vietnamese English language teacher’s L2 writing cognition developments Second language writing teacher cognition As stated in Section 1, L2 writing researchers have paid increasing attention to teacher cognition in recent years, and several themes have emerged from this burgeoning literature In terms of pedagogy, it was found that teachers’ views of writing and writing instruction did change over time (Lee, 2013), and instructors working in different countries held distinct perspectives on L2 writing (Reichelt, 2009) Regarding feedback, teachers were shown to prefer direct over indirect correction (Guenette & Lyster, 2013) and attend more to such local issues as grammar and vocabulary rather than global aspects of writing (Junqueira & Payant, 2015) Dissonance between beliefs and practices was also a prominent theme in the feedback literature, but findings have been rather mixed While many teachers in Lee (2009) exhibited mismatches between their feedback beliefs and practices, those in more recent studies (Ferris, 2014; Min, 2013) demonstrated high levels of consistency Another important line of inquiry in L2 writing teacher cognition concerns assessment, which, however, remains seriously under-explored (Crusan, Plakans, & Gebril, 2016) Crusan’s et al (2016) large-scale survey found that participating teachers were better trained than previous studies suggested; however, they remained insecure about their assessment literacy especially in designing marking rubrics Similar to language teacher cognition scholars in other subfields, L2 writing researchers also sought to examine factors that influenced teacher cognition In contrast to the conflicting accounts in teacher education (Borg, 2011), most L2 writing teacher cognition studies have supported the considerable and positive role of teacher education programs in expanding participants’ view of writing and formation of new identities (Lee, 2013), especially when such programs involved innovative features such as the genre-based pedagogy (Gebhard et al., 2013), community service projects (He & Prater, 2014), and guided reflection (Xiao, 2014) In addition, previous learning experiences were found to substantially affect how pre-service teachers learned to teach concepts such as parallelism (Worden, 2015) This source of influence continued to be evident in in-service teachers’ cognition especially when they received limited training in L2 writing pedagogy (Reichelt, 2009) Finally, contextual factors have also been shown to shape teachers’ views of what constitutes proper writing instruction and their practice For example, East Asian teachers shared strikingly similar views about the importance of teaching explicit strategies and conventions (Lee, 2014) Likewise, teachers in Lee (2008) attended more to errors in their feedback, which could be traced back to Hong Kong’s exam culture Significant as their findings might be, most papers reviewed above share a common problem as previously indicated: they adopted a predominantly cognitivist view of teacher cognition and hence represented the individualist generation of language teacher cognition literature (Burns et al., 2015) In other words, most have not paid adequate attention to the social dimensions of language teacher cognition This is noticeable even in quite recent papers such as Min’s self-study (2013), which highlights the complex decision-making process of an individual teacher but shows little regard for the wider sociocultural context Likewise, in Lee (2009), Ferris (2014), and Junqueira and Payant (2015), the focus was on identifying and resolving the dissonance between teachers’ feedback beliefs and practices, which can be linked to the cognitivist view of cognition as “mental constructs … unavailable for direct observation” (Kubanyiova & Feryok, 2015, p.437) Another problem is that many reviewed studies have yet to properly account for the temporal dimension of teacher cognition In fact, most L2 writing teacher cognition studies have employed cross-sectional data (Crusan et al 2016) or covered a restricted timeframe such as a teacher preparation course (Lee, 2013) or one semester (Min, 2013) This inadequate coverage of teacher cognition’s chronological developments is clearly problematic because it does not reflect the contemporary view of language teacher cognition as “a function of place and time operating through interaction or negotiation” (Burns et al., 2015, p.592) To bridge these gaps, an L2 writing teacher cognition study will need to adopt a theoretical framework that reflects both the socially embedded nature and temporality of teacher cognition This explicates why Vygotsky’s sociocultural theory, a theory of mind that emphasizes cognition’s social origins and the necessity of examining mental phenomena’s chronological developments (Wertsch, 1985), has been adopted in the current research Based on the sociocultural theory, this study aims to reveal the major shifts in a Vietnamese English language teacher’s cognition about L2 writing and the resources that mediated those developments over time To lay the foundation for the research, the sociocultural theory’s view of cognition and two sociocultural concepts deemed relevant for this paper, namely the genetic method and the concept of mediation, will be presented in the next section Theoretical frameworks In the sociocultural theory, cognition is seen as socially mediated and “the internalized result of social interactions” (Vygotsky, 1981, p.147) In other words, the sociocultural theory emphasizes the social origins of cognition, arguing that these higher mental functions initially emerge on the inter-psychological plane (i.e between people) when they participate in sociocultural activities (Johnson, 2015) These functions are then transformed onto the intra-psychological plane via the process of internalization, which is not “a direct transfer of concepts, knowledge or skills from the outside in, but a transformative process whereby a person’s cognitive structure is changed” (Johnson & Golombek, 2011a, p.489) Placed in the language teaching context, the sociocultural theory suggests that it is via their participation in teaching and learning activities that teachers’ beliefs emerge Clearly, this is compatible with the metaphor of language teacher cognition as “emergent sense making in action” (Kubanyiova & Feryok, 2015, p.436) as mentioned in Section However, the sociocultural theory’s contribution is that it also underscores “the dialectic between thinking and doing with the socially and culturally constructed contexts” (Cross, 2010, p.438), or put simply, “changes in social activity effect changes in individual cognition” (Johnson, 2015, p.516) and vice versa In human cognition research, Vygotsky (1978, 1981) advocates the use of genetic analysis, affirming that an understanding of advanced mental phenomena must be predicated on a thorough comprehension of its origins and developments (i.e its genesis) A major benefit of this developmental approach, he argues, is that it can provide an explanatory rather than merely descriptive account of studied phenomena (Cross, 2010) This emphasis on studying the history of cognition forms the core of Vygotsky’s genetic method together with several other key tenets as follows (Wertsch, 1985) First, Vygotsky (1981) rejects the notion that developments occur only in quantitative increments and highlights the role of “sudden, qualitative, revolutionary shifts” (p.144) Second, he posits that these developmental leaps often coincide with the introduction of new forms of mediation (tools and signs) (Wertsch, 1985) Third, the genesis of higher mental functions must be studied as part of “a larger, integrated picture involving several genetic domains” (Wertsch, 1985, p.27), namely the phylogenesis (human beings’ physical evolution as a race), cultural-history (the broad sociocultural advances), ontogenesis (the developments of an individual across time), and the microgenesis or “the moment-to-moment time of lived human experience” (Cole & Engeström, 1993, p.19) Placed in this study, Vygotsky’s genetic method implies that an examination of L2 writing teacher cognition must involve studying its historical developments (genesis) Moreover, while it is logical to foreground the ontogenesis, ontogenetic facts should be examined in light of data from the other domains especially the cultural-historical and micro-genetic domains As for the phylogenetic domain, it will not be featured in this paper since the domain’s natural forces assume a static rather than a dynamic role in the developments of higher mental functions (Wertsch, 1985) Additionally, in keeping with this method’s spirit, revolutionary shifts in L2 writing teacher cognition need to be highlighted together with the mediational means that have afforded such developments The final point in the preceding paragraph makes it essential to discuss the concept of mediation and mediational resources here Mediation is a core concept in the sociocultural theory and can be defined as “the process through which humans deploy culturally constructed artifacts, concepts, and activities to regulate the material world or their own and each other’s social and mental activity” (Lantolf & Thorne, 2006, p 79) Key to this definition is the role of mediating resources, which are comprised of tools and signs, both physical and psychological (Vygotsky, 1981) Vygotsky (1978) himself views tools (e.g a hammer or a handsaw) as having an external orientation and helping human beings master nature In contrast, signs (e.g language, numbers, music, etc.) are regarded as “internally oriented … acting as means of internal activity” (Vygotsky, 1978, p.55) so that humans can master themselves However, this distinction apparently does not appeal to contemporary sociocultural theory scholars, who tend to refer to tools and signs collectively as artifacts In papers such as Johnson (2009) and Johnson & Golombek (2011b), “tools” is used as an umbrella term and synonymous with mediational resources or means which are further divided into cultural artifacts, social relations and concepts Concepts, as Johnson (2009) defines, “are not fixed objects but develop dynamically through use, so they are learned over time and formed through the processes of synthesis and analysis, while moving repeatedly between engagement in activity and abstract reasoning” (p 20) Concepts can further be classified into everyday and scientific concepts (Vygotsky, 1963) Placed in second language teacher education (SLTE), everyday concepts can be seen as views originating from teachers’ learning and teaching experiences, whereas scientific concepts result from “theoretical investigation of a specific domain”, and have the potential to mediate teachers’ cognition developments by empowering them “to move beyond the limitations of their everyday experiences and function appropriately in a wide range of alternative circumstances and contexts” (Johnson, 2009, p.21) In addition to cultural artifacts and concepts, mediation can also be provided by other human beings or via social relations Rogoff (1995) argues that human mediation may occur in form of apprenticeship, where human beings’ cognition development is mediated by their participation as active members of a community, and guided participation, where the mediation comes from their interactions with other individuals (both experts and novices) The result of such mediation is that “individuals change and handle a later situation in ways prepared by their own participation in the previous situation” (p.142), a concept referred to as participatory appropriation in Rogoff (1995) Methods 4.1 Research questions and design This study aims to reveal the major shifts in a Vietnamese English language teacher’s cognition about L2 writing and the resources that mediated those developments through the lens of Vygotsky’s genetic method and concept of mediation In other words, it focuses on answering the two following questions How did the participant’s cognition about L2 writing develop? What sociocultural resources mediated her L2 writing cognition developments? The narrative design was adopted to address the two above questions firstly because it is suited for conducting studies that focus on the contexts of language teacher cognition (Kubanyiova & Feryok, 2015), at both micro and macro levels (Barkhuizen, 2007) Moreover, narrative inquiry can offer a longitudinal account (Bell, 2011), and is hence suited for uncovering the temporal dimension of language teacher cognition Furthermore, as participants are involved in crafting their life histories, they are afforded mediational space to reflect on their experiences (Johnson & Golombek, 2011b) and the opportunity to raise their voice and exercise their agency (Pavlenko, 2007) Finally, despite its increased popularity in language teacher education literature, the presence of narrative inquiry in L2 writing scholarship remains limited as my examination of this subfield’s bibliographies in the past decade has revealed Hence, by employing the narrative design, this study, in addition to its main objective of offering insight into L2 writing teacher cognition, can also expand the methodological diversity of L2 writing literature 4.2 Context & participant The study was conducted in Vietnam, a developing country in South East Asia, where English is by far the most popular foreign language, and despite receiving serious public attention and resources, the quality of English teaching and learning in the country remains low by international standards (Pham, 2014) To remedy the situation, the Vietnamese government launched Project 2020 by issuing Decision 1400, which highlights the major strategies and goals for the sector from 2008 to 2020 (Vietnamese Government, 2008) The research site was a public university called Lingua (pseudonym), a leader in training foreign language teachers in northern Vietnam with the English faculty where the participant, Jara (pseudonym), worked being its largest unit Jara was selected for the current study first because of her willingness to participate, a crucial requirement for narrative research (Pavlenko, 2007) Moreover, she possessed extensive experience in writing instruction as elaborated below, which promises the richness of narrative data to be collected Finally, she was highly regarded by both her colleagues and students as an effective teacher in all four skills including writing Thus, an examination of her cognition developments and the resources that mediated those shifts will potentially offer useful implications for training of effective teachers like Jara Regarding her qualifications, Jara earned a bachelor’s degree in teaching English with distinction from Lingua’s fast-track program, an advanced stream reserved for its top 10% students She also held a master’s degree in applied linguistics with high distinction from a prestigious Australian university Additionally, she possessed the highest level of English proficiency (C2) on the European Common Framework of Reference scale according to her International English Language Testing System (IELTS) exam results Since graduating from her bachelor’s course, Jara had been in continuous employment with Lingua for eight years, delivering writing courses every semester besides other language skill classes Before taking a sabbatical leave for her master’s program in Australia, she taught writing III and IV, two consecutive courses that covered different types of paragraphs (descriptive, narrative, comparison - contrast, cause - effect, and argumentative) Upon her return, the entire English curriculum was overhauled and re-divided into three distinct streams (English for academic purposes - EAP, English for standardized exams - ESE, and English for general purposes EGP) in which writing was integrated with reading in each session rather than being taught separately Initially, she was assigned to teach an EAP course (EAP 3), where three types of For the time being, I think it’s OK to use it [the IELTS rating scale] because it’s familiar … that’s why I adopted [it in 3E and 4E] … because I couldn’t create one myself … and among those available, the IELTS scale is rather detailed and it’s familiar … and it applies to what I’m teaching … that is essays… so I find it OK to so In these exam preparation courses, teachers were not explicitly required to comment on students’ writing; however, Jara did try to offer as much feedback as possible during class time As she observed, her students were more motivated to write under time pressure because they knew that those completing the task first would receive immediate teacher feedback A sample of her comments can be found in Figure Evidently, Jara adopted an eclectic approach, using both direct and indirect techniques; her comments were also very comprehensive, covering almost all linguistic errors, and concerning both form and content Jara admitted that in ESE and 4, she attended more to serious grammar issues such as verb forms, not for fear of communication breakdowns, but because these problems would be heavily penalized in standardized tests [INSERT FIGURE HERE] Figure Jara’s comments Clearly, when Jara joined the community of exam teachers in ESE and 4, her view of writing narrowed to the production of essays and letters under exam conditions, and her main object was to ensure her students’ optimal performance in writing tests, which reflected in her instructional and feedback behavior This can be regarded as a form of mediation by apprenticeship (Rogoff, 1995) which entails a new member actively participating in a shared goal-directed activity and in the process adopting the community’s values and beliefs (although the apprentice was placed in a leadership position here) Guided participation also featured in this case because her interactions with students or more precisely students’ enthusiasm about receiving her comments clearly mediated her feedback cognition, motivating her to respond to their writing as frequently as possible Moreover, Jara’s interactions with her supervisors made her more aware of the need to teach to the test, or to 18 approach writing as exam products rather than a process Jara’s everyday concepts of the process and genre pedagogy which dated back to her ontogenetic experiences at university remained influential but were appropriated by the participant herself For example, instead of simply guiding her students through the writing process, she took them through the process of responding to exam prompts under time pressure; likewise, the teaching of writing genres was modified into the introduction of genres of exam writing tasks In addition to human and concept mediation, various artifacts also contributed to this qualitative shift in Jara’s L2 writing cognition These ranged from reference books on teaching for exams to test preparation materials that enabled Jara to compile in-house ESE and textbooks and in the process developed her knowledge about writing test coaching strategies The IELTS writing rating scale also deserves to be mentioned since it mediated her cognition about qualities of good writing Furthermore, her exam-centered cognition can also be linked to Project 2020’s mandatory testing policy This national policy, as a culturalhistorical artifact (Cross, 2010), was apparently internalized by different levels of Lingua’s management, then externalized by them in form of two new exam courses (ESE and 4) before finally restructuring Jara’s cognition Discussion The paper has corroborated previous L2 writing teacher cognition studies such as Lee (2013) by revealing the dynamic nature of Jara’s cognition Additionally, it has highlighted the participating teacher’s test-centered cognition at the end of the study despite her initial communication-oriented view of L2 writing, a finding comparable to Lee (2008) and Lee (2014) Despite focusing on both content and language, the participant also devoted more attention to linguistic issues in her feedback similar to the teacher in Junqueira and Payant (2015) Jara’s dependence on the IELTS rating scale also showed her lack of confidence about designing assessment rubrics, which resonates with Crusan et al (2016) 19 More significantly, this paper has utilized the sociocultural lens to uncover the dialectical nature of L2 writing teacher cognition developments This means that one development lays the foundation for the next one, in which the initial development is both negated and existing The dialectical interrelationships of the participating teacher’s four major cognition shifts are depicted in Figure [INSERT FIGURE HERE] Figure Jara’s dialectical SWL cognition shifts As can be seen from this model, the first milestone in Jara’s L2 writing cognition occurred when she developed the view of writing as a process, an initial understanding of genre-based pedagogy, and an appreciation for both form- and content-focused feedback Her cognition subsequently experienced an upward trajectory when her view of learner writing was expanded, resulting in her greater tolerance with grammar mistakes and increased attention to “potential communication breakdowns” However, this was followed by a negative view of EAP writing, and finally a confinement of writing to the standardized testing context Hence, the last two shifts have been positioned below Shift and The dialectic between the four major shifts is indicated by multiple lines with arrowheads at both ends Notably, the dialectical relationships existed not only between two immediate shifts but also across all four major ones However, the relationships between two non-immediate shifts (for example, Shift and 3, or and 4) were not always obvious, and hence are indicated by dash lines For example, Jara’s priority given to linguistic errors in Shift could be seen as a negation of her communication-oriented view of L2 writing in Shift and Simultaneously, the traces of Shift and even Shift still existed in Shift 4, evidenced by her consistent attention to content problems in student writing Regarding the mediators, the study has confirmed the benefits of teacher education programs similar to Lee (2013), He and Prater (2014), and Xiao (2014) However, the 20 mediation in Jara’s case came from her exposure to the scholarly literature rather than from a specific course such as in Lee (2013) This difference was to be expected, given that there was no course devoted to L2 writing pedagogy in the participant’s case and neither was she afforded the chance to engage in guided reflection (Xiao, 2014) or innovative teaching projects (He & Prater, 2014) Furthermore, the influence of language learning experiences on L2 writing teacher cognition (Reichelt, 2009; Worden, 2015) can also be detected in Jara’s narrative However, based on the sociocultural theory, this paper has reconceptualized teachers’ ontogenetic experiences as the source of two types of mediation The first type was human mediation which played presumably the most significant role in Jara’s cognition shifts For instance, it was the guided participation provided by Jara’s favorite teachers that mediated her own L2 writing belief and practice developments Likewise, apprenticeship mediation (Rogoff, 1995) contributed considerably to Shift and in Jara’s cognition (Figure 2) since these shifts coincided with her participation in communities of EAP and ESE teachers respectively The second type of mediation stemming from Jara’s ontogenesis was offered by concepts, both everyday and scientific, but everyday concepts were apparently more influential than scientific ones Nevertheless, while the mediation of scientific concepts such as learner language literature was generally positive, helping Jara develop a balanced feedback cognition, everyday concept mediation could be negative, a phenomenon that echoes with Johnson (2009) For instance, Jara’s internalization of her own interactions with peers during her undergraduate program led to her notion of group work as being unfair and motivated her to avoid this work arrangement even when it was specified in EAP course guide Another pattern is that scientific concepts were appropriated by Jara in light of her everyday concepts, which explains why Ellis and Barkhuizen (2005) could mediate Jara’s feedback cognition towards a more communication-oriented approach (see 5.2) 21 The paper has also affirmed the role of context, both micro and macro, in shaping L2 writing teacher cognition similar to Lee (2008), Lee (2014) and Reichelt (2009) However, by viewing the micro context as the microgenetic environment where the teacher’s microgenesis or “momentary instances of concrete, practical activity” (Cross, 2010, p.439) unfolds and the macro context as the cultural-historical domain, the study has connected rather than separated these two contexts and underscored their dialectical influence (Wertsch, 1985) on the participant’s cognition In other words, the context mediation both expanded and constrained Jara’s L2 writing cognition For example, Vietnam’s economic growth resulted in the import of Western pedagogies both in form of textbooks and Western educated teachers and made the Internet an accessible artifact, enabling Jara’s first cognition shift (Figure 2) In contrast, the mandatory standardized testing policy, a cultural-historical artifact (Cross, 2010), narrowed Jara’s L2 writing cognition and made it more exam-oriented Most importantly, this paper has highlighted two themes that have not been salient in L2 writing teacher cognition literature First, it has demonstrated that without artifacts, teachers’ experiences, reconceptualized above as the source of human and concept mediation, would not have led to cognition transformations For instance, the human mediation in Shift (Figure 2) could not have been internalized by the participant without textbooks, handouts and the Internet The other salient theme is that the resources (concepts, humans, artifacts) worked in unison rather than in isolation to mediate the participant’s cognition Their interrelationships are visualized in Figure [INSERT FIGURE HERE] Figure Sociocultural resources mediating L2 writing teacher cognition In this model, Jara’s cognition ecology which subsumed both her unobservable beliefs and concrete practices (or microgenesis (Cross, 2010)) operated at the microgenetic level As such, it was evidently mediated by microgenetic artifacts such as language learning materials, 22 and other humans in her immediate context (faculty staff and students) Nonetheless, her cognition was also mediated by her past teachers and the concepts stemming from her extensive language learning and teaching history Such mediation at the microgenetic and ontogenetic levels occurred on the broad canvas of the cultural-historical domain, which was always present but not easily discernible, and hence is depicted by a dash circle The culturalhistoric domain’s mediation might be direct (via a concrete artifact such as the mandatory testing policy) or indirect (for example, Vietnam’s economic growth enabled Jara to receive instruction from Western-educated teachers) Taken as a whole, the model suggests that L2 writing teacher cognition exists in the dialectic between three types of mediators (humans, concepts, and artifacts) which originate from three genetic domains (cultural-historical, ontogenetic, and microgenetic), an observation reminiscent of Cross’ (2010) comment on language teacher agency Because of their multi-level origins, these mediators not always work in harmony For example, Jara’s ontogenetically derived concept of learner writing as a process did not match the mandatory testing policy (a cultural-historical artifact) in which writing was implicitly regarded as a product The disharmony between the mediators partly explicates why L2 writing teacher cognition is often unstable and filled with contradictions, which Jara’s case clearly exemplifies Conclusion In line with contemporary language teacher cognition literature, the paper has adopted a participation-oriented view of cognition and Vygotsky’s genetic method and concept of mediation to investigate the major shifts in a Vietnamese English language teacher’s L2 writing cognition and the mediating resources involved It has demonstrated that her cognition changes followed a complex, non-linear trajectory, and there were dialectical interrelationships between these shifts Concerning the mediators, the study has revealed that human mediation, in form of apprenticeship and guided participation, assumed the most 23 significant role, followed by the mediation by concepts, both everyday and scientific However, such mediation would not have been effectively internalized without artifacts such as language learning materials and the Internet Most importantly, these three types of resources worked simultaneously and dialectically to mediate the participant’s cognition, suggesting that it is in the space between their dialectic that L2 writing teacher cognition resides (Figure 3) The study has a number of limitations First, as a single case study, its findings are not statistically generalizable to EFL teachers in Vietnam and other countries Nevertheless, it has attempted to expand the language teacher cognition literature via analytic generalization which entails “a carefully posed theoretical proposition [that] can take the form of a lesson learned, working hypothesis, or other principle that is believed to be applicable to other situations” (Yin, 2014, p 68) In addition, it has adopted a theoretical framework to overcome issues associated with simple thematic analysis (Pavlenko, 2007) so that the findings can be interpreted beyond a specific context Another problem is the lack of observational data, which means little was known about the teacher’s actual pedagogical practices or microgenesis Nevertheless, this issue was partly mitigated thanks to other potential sources of microgenetic data including institutional documents such as course guides and textbooks as well as her students’ commented essays Despite its shortcomings, the study has made some important contributions First, it argues for a more expanded view of L2 writing teacher cognition and demonstrates how this can be achieved by adopting a theory that accounts for both the social and historical dimensions of language teacher cognition Unlike Cross (2010) who calls for a unifying framework, the paper is intended to showcase Vygotsky’s sociocultural theory as a viable rather than the only option because I believe that the complexity of language teacher cognition is best explored from multiple perspectives and limiting this field to one single 24 framework may repeat the problems levelled at the cognitivist tradition (Kubanyiova & Feryok, 2015) Second, following analytic generalization (Yin, 2014), the paper has presented two models: the first one (see Figure 2) highlights L2 writing teacher cognition’s historical and dialectical developments, while the second one (see Figure 3) shows the dialectical and mediated nature of L2 writing teacher cognition The model in Figure is particularly innovative since it depicts how multiple factors mediate L2 writing teacher cognition in unison compared with previous L2 writing teacher cognition studies which tended to focus on one or two well-defined elements Third, in terms of research design, it has exhibited both the potential of applying narrative inquiry to L2 writing topics, and the effectiveness of combining this interpretive design with a powerful framework like the sociocultural theory, following Pavlenko’s (2007) recommendation In this study, the genetic method informed the research questions, and guided both the data collection and analysis, underlining the need to account for three genetic domains, while the concept of mediation served as an explanatory framework to facilitate the generation and communication of findings Finally, the research has shed light on an under-explored L2 writing context and in the process has provided its focal participant with a mediational space (Johnson & Golombek, 2011a) to reorganize and restructure her L2 writing cognition Funding This research did not receive any specific grant from funding agencies in the public, commercial, or not-for-profit sectors References Barkhuizen, G (2007) A narrative approach to exploring context in language teaching ELT Journal, 62(3), 231-239 doi:10.1093/elt/ccm043 25 Belcher, D D., & Hirvela, A (2018) Introduction to teaching writing In The TESOL Encyclopedia of English Language Teaching doi:10.1002/9781118784235.eeltv04b Bell, J S (2011) Reporting and publishing narrative inquiry in TESOL: Challenges and rewards TESOL Quarterly, 45(3), 575-584 doi:10.5054/tq.2011.256792 Borg, S (2003) Teacher cognition in language teaching: A review of research on what language teachers think, know, believe, and Language Teaching, 36, 81-109 doi:10.1017/S0261444803001903 Borg, S (2011) The 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study of ESL writing instructors (Unpublished doctoral dissertation) University of Cincinnati, Cincinnati 30 Shift student writing as “evidence of thinking” Shift process writing; genre-based pedagogy; feedback on both content and language aspects Shift EAP writing as “irrelevant and too demanding” Shift Writing as a response to an exam prompt Artifacts Microgenesis Jara’s cognition Concepts Humans Ontogenesis Cultural-historical domain .. .A sociocultural perspective on second language writing teacher cognition: A Vietnamese teacher? ??s narrative Introduction The field of second language (L2) writing, which includes research on. .. examine a Vietnamese English language teacher? ??s L2 writing cognition developments Second language writing teacher cognition As stated in Section 1, L2 writing researchers have paid increasing attention... mediation” and “artifact mediation” to the data portion Additionally, regarding the fact that the change in Jara’s feedback cognition was not within the book’s aims, another code “artifact appropriation”