Does the Common Test Measure the Thinking Skills Necessary for the 21st Century?

Abstract

　　Japan’s Common Test for University Admissions was first held in January 2021, replacing the National Center Test for University Admissions. One of the major shifts in the new university entrance exam was in the focus on assessing students’ abilities to think, judge, and express themselves in a multilateral and comprehensive manner, along with knowledge. However, thinking skills in English as a foreign language along with university entrance exams have not been extensively explored. This study examined the English Reading Tests of the 2021 and 2022 Common Tests, as well as the Course of Study revised in 2009 on which those tests were based, to determine if they were indeed developed to assess thinking skills in parallel with reading comprehension in English. The study applied the revised Bloom’s Taxonomy to analyze the cognitive processes that examinees need to employ while answering each test question. The results showed that all questions required lower-order thinking skills and only a few required higher-order thinking skills. Contrary to the claims of experts affiliated with educational institutions and academic associations in Japan, the current research demonstrated that the assessment of thinking skills in the English Reading Tests was limited.