The Effect of Constructive Alignment in a Flipped Writing Course on Academic Writing, Self-efficacy and attitude of EFL Learners

Constructive alignment has been examined in recent years as an instrumental curriculum design notion in education; however, few studies have been done regarding its effectiveness in an EFL writing course. This study examined whether designing a virtual flipped classroom based on the Constructive Alignment principles made any changes in learners’ writing ability, self-efficacy, and attitude. Besides, the learners’ prior learning experience was considered to study whether prior distance learning or in-person learning experience had any effects on the results. To this aim, a homogeneity test was administered and 80 students from two Iranian universities were selected as the final participants. After being assigned randomly into four groups, two experimental and two control groups, some instruments including writing tests, a self-efficacy questionnaire, an attitude questionnaire, and a semi-structured interview were utilized to elicit the data. Over a period of one semester, both the CAFG1 and CAFG2, with different prior learning experiences, as the experimental groups were taught in a constructively aligned flipped learning mode in which the course plan including both cognitive and affective domains had been organized according to CA. The quantitative data of the pretest and posttest of a paragraph writing and self-efficacy questionnaire were analyzed based on One-way ANOVA and post hoc Scheffe’s tests indicated that both CAFGs outperformed the Non-CAFGs on paragraph writing and writing self-efficacy; however, the quantitative and qualitative data collected via writing attitude questionnaire and semi-structured interview indicated all the students’ positive attitudes toward writing. Based on the findings, pedagogical implications were further provided.