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 l

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

(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

2 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

3 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 1 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 developmentalapproach, 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)

4 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

1 How did the participant’s cognition about L2 writing develop?

2 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

academic essays (cause - effect, comparison - contrast, and argumentative) were featured However, in the next semester, she was promoted to coordinator of two exam preparation courses (ESE 3 and 4), whose writing components focused on letter and essay writing respectively

Her students were second-year English majors, and according to Jara’s observation, despite being supposed to attain Level B2 (CEFR) when they enrolled on her classes, their proficiency varied from one cohort to the other, depending primarily on the university’s annually adjusted admission score Regardless of their entry levels, her students were

required to pass international or national standardized English tests at Level C1 to earn their bachelor’s degrees according to Decision 1400 (Vietnamese Government, 2008)

4.3 Data collection

Central to narrative research is the participant’s life story (Murray, 2009), so various sources of data were collected to facilitate the composition of Jara’s narrative on her lifelong engagement with writing both as a student and as a teacher The most important data source was a series of recorded face-to-face interviews between the researcher and Jara conducted over five months An unstructured interview was first used to make the participant feel more comfortable and willing to open up; this was then succeeded by a series of semi-structured interviews whose predefined questions ensures that critical information can be obtained within the time constraint, whereas their flexible nature allows the chance to clarify and explore emerging themes (Dörnyei, 2007) The language used during all the interviews was Vietnamese, the mother tongue of both the researcher and the participant in accordance with her preference; nevertheless, she was encouraged to code-switch between L1 and L2

(English) whenever necessary As the depth of narrative research is possible thanks to a privileged access to the otherwise personal and secretive world of the researched (Pavlenko, 2007), considerable attempt was made to establish close rapport between the researcher and

the participant Nevertheless, the reminder of Clandinin and Connelly’s (2000) of the need to balance between the coolness and closeness was also heeded to ensure the study quality To supplement and triangulate the interview data, policy documents, media reports, and

academic papers on the Vietnamese EFL industry were obtained by the researcher himself, whereas the participant was asked to provide relevant institutional documents such as course guides, textbooks and exam papers as well as her students’ writing scripts

4.4 Data analysis

Initially, the data were prepared and analyzed for narrative construction as

recommended in Murray (2009) All interviews were transcribed in full as a precaution against biases stemming from selective transcription Subsequently, the transcripts were sent back to the participant for her feedback, and upon her approval of the scripts, categorical content analysis and the constant comparative method were employed to detect patterns in her professional life This laid the foundation for the composition of her narrative which included the three dimensions of narrative space (Clandinin & Connelly, 2000) The life story was then returned to the participant for her comments and approval

In the second stage, her narrative was thematically analyzed guided by both the sociocultural theory and L2 writing literature Following the genetic method (Vygotsky, 1981), the major shifts in her cognition were identified together with the sociocultural

resources that mediated such developments These mediational means were classified into social relations, concepts and artifacts based on Johnson (2009), and attempt was also made

to link these resources to the cultural-historic, ontogenetic and microgenetic domains An excerpt from Jara’s narrative, which covers her master’s program in Australia, is provided below to illustrate the thematic analysis

After three years of working at Lingua, Jara won a scholarship and spent a year and a half pursuing a master’s program in applied linguistics at a top-ranking Australian university She took nine courses in total, and among them, only two courses touched upon writing, the first one being language testing and

well delivered and could barely recall the lessons that concerned the writing skill in both courses What struck her most was her extensive exposure to the literature on corrective feedback and learner

language when she had to complete assessment tasks in other courses As Jara affirmed, it changed her perception of learners’ writing, making her view it as a form of communication in which personal and cultural values were revealed rather than merely a paper full of errors to be corrected Accordingly, besides offering corrective feedback, she drew her students’ attention to expressions that may lead to communication breakdown if they were to talk to native speakers

This piece of data, although brief, contains significant information pertaining to both research questions As shall be elaborated in Section 5.3, it reveals a major change in Jara’s cognition about learner writing (“as a form of communication … rather than a paper full of errors…”), so this portion was coded as “major shift - learner writing” However, it was later observed that her altered view of learner writing resulted in changes in her feedback

cognition (“she drew her students’ attention to expressions that may lead to communication breakdown”), so another code “major shift - feedback” was also added To understand the mediational resources that afforded this shift, the researcher conducted follow-up interviews and managed to trace back “the literature on corrective feedback and learner language” that Jara referred to, especially her favorite book (Ellis & Barkhuizen, 2005) A close examination

of this book and her narrative against Johnson’s (2009) mediational means led the researcher

to assign the codes “concept 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” was added to this extract

4.5 Research ethics

Ethical issues were taken seriously throughout the research, and recommendations in Dörnyei (2007) were closely observed In the absence of a formal ethics committee, approval was sought from the management board of both the participant’s and the researcher’s

institutions, and Jara herself was provided with sufficient information about the study and the voluntary nature of her participation in both written and oral modes Additionally, only non-sensitive personal information is provided, and pseudonyms were consistently used to ensure

the confidentiality of and prevent harm to the participant and other people and institutions mentioned Finally, all drafts of this paper were subject to the participant’s consent before submission

5 Findings

In line with narrative inquiry literature (Bell, 2011), this section will present Jara’s major cognition developments chronologically and sociocultural resources that mediated those shifts In brief, the study has found that Jara’s L2 writing cognition experienced four major shifts, which were far from linear

5.1 From initial confusion to emerging views of L2 writing

As Jara admitted, although she was exposed to essay writing early, these initial encounters left her confused about what constituted “good writing” and how it should be taught Following is Jara’s own description of her second encounter with essay writing when she was part of her high school’s selected English team

It was not really learning … [I] was thrown a topic and told to write … no instruction whatsoever on how to write an essay … The day after that, he [the instructor] returned it, and the only thing I saw [on

my paper] was a score of 6 … not sure 6 out of 9 [IELTS nine-band score system] or 10 [the

Vietnamese 10-point score system]… so I was exposed to writing quite early… but I didn’t learn anything

The leaps in her cognition, or her “first decent writing lessons” came when she took

an academic paragraph writing course with Ms Sophia (pseudonym) in Semester 3 and the other on academic essay writing with Ms Hailey (pseudonym) in Semester 4 at university For the former teacher, Jara was deeply impressed because:

She [Ms Sophia was]… very methodological … like she would always start with a lead-in activity … Then she would show us how to write a certain type of paragraph… provide us with a handout that listed key words and phrases… she followed the course book closely … generally she was very thorough in her approach … step by step …

Ms Sophia was also praised by Jara for providing feedback both orally in front of the whole class and in written form despite the fact that “she [Ms Sophia] did not correct much

of my[Jara’s] word choice” In contrast, Ms Hailey did not adopt an official textbook but instead provided a list of recommended readings, and routinely requested Jara and her

classmates to report and discuss the features of different academic essay genres based on their previously conducted Internet research In addition to her rather unique approach, Ms Hailey also provided Jara with “the most helpful feedback” since “she [Ms Hailey] could see the bigger picture … bigger flaw in my writing … about reasoning and how I handled the writing task…”

It is evident from Jara’s narrative that her emerging views of L2 writing were mainly mediated by social relations, especially via her interactions with Ms Sophia and Ms Hailey With her “step-by-step approach”, Ms Sophia presented Jara with a working model of the process approach (Racelis & Matsuda, 2013), whereas Ms Hailey drew Jara’s attention to the need to read extensively about target genres, hence facilitating her learning of genre

pedagogy (Hyland, 2007) Likewise, their feedback practices were also internalized by Jara, who was later shown to attend to both content and language aspects in her own comments on student writing (see Figure 1 in 5.4) The human mediation was also provided, although in another direction, by the other writing teachers whose unsuccessful interactions with Jara raised her awareness of ineffective writing instructional approaches However, the human mediationwould not have been effectively internalized without the cultural artifacts For example, Ms Sophia’s textbook and handouts contributed to Jara developing knowledge about writing strategies and linguistic resources for each paragraph type Another crucial artifact was clearly the Internet, from which Jara obtained extensive information and

numerous samples of different essay categories Looking beyond these microgenetic

elements, it can also be maintained that Jara’s cognition was facilitated by her country’s international integration and economic growth (Pham, 2014) Thanks to this, many

Vietnamese EFL teachers, such as Jara’s two favorite teachers, had the chance to study

abroad and bring home with them innovative language teaching methods Likewise, the Internet, which mediated Jara’s development of academic essay knowledge, could be

considered a cultural-historical artifact reflecting Vietnam’s economic and technological progress at the time

5.2 Student writing: from a paper to be corrected to “evidence of thinking”

Another major shift occurred during Jara’s master’s course in Australia when she had the chance to engage extensively with learner language literature Thanks to this,

My view of student writing was changed… Previously [before Jara did her master’s course] I assessed student writing in terms of grammar, vocabulary, content and stuff like that … but after the MA course,

I see it as … evidence of their thinking… I mean it reveals so much about their cultural values … and their thinking … that made me more interested in student papers Before that my view was a bit … mechanical… now it’s partly cultural… partly personal… so it was more meaningful communication

Arguably, these developments were mediated by scientific concepts with Jara herself claiming to be particularly influenced by Ellis and Barkhuizen (2005) Interestingly, this publication, a cultural artifact, is intended to “serve as an introduction to SLA [second

language acquisition] research”, offering methodological and theoretical guidelines as well as practice tasks to “develop readers’ ability to undertake analysis of samples of learner

language” (p.ix) However, its content was appropriated and internalized by Jara, making her

“more tolerant with language issues” and not to “be obsessed with errors”, and instead pay more attention to instances when her students’ expressions potentially caused “serious

miscommunication” It is worth noting that these positive changes, however, did not fall within Ellis and Barkhuizen’s (2005) intended goals