Investigating the Relationship between Washback and Curriculum Alignment: A Literature Review

Authors

  • Nasreen Sultana Faculty of Education Queen's University, Kingston, Canada

Keywords:

washback, curriculum alignment, classroom instruction, scoping review

Abstract

Abstract: “Washback” and “curriculum alignment,” two dominant fields in education, are well researched individually but rarely are studied together. The purpose of this article is to understand the connection between these two areas and to search for an existing link between them. Scoping review has been used as a method to synthesize the existing washback and curriculum alignment studies to conduct a systematic review. This literature review illustrates that both curriculum alignment and washback studies look at classroom instruction; thus, alignment studies could be a new avenue for washback research if curriculum alignment produces the washback effect on classroom teaching and learning. This paper contributes to the existing literature of both the fields under discussion by mapping out the evidential links between them. The study concludes that by looking at the curriculum alignment and washback together we can expect richer insight of how an aligned educational system can reduce negative exam influence on classroom instruction. 

Author Biography

Nasreen Sultana, Faculty of Education Queen's University, Kingston, Canada

Nasreen Sultana is a Ph.D. candidate at the faculty of education, Queen’s University, Kingston, Canada. Earlier, she earned MPhil in English Langauge Education and MA in English. Prior to joining the Ph.D. program, she taught at the tertiary level for about five years. She has presented at many international conferences and published in quite a few refereed journals too. Her areas of interest include language testing and assessment, teacher education and language of media.

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Published

2018-12-09

Issue

Vol. 9 No. 2 (2018)

Section

Literature Review/Revue de la documentation

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