Assessment Research and Development Office

Keitaro Kamata Keitaro Kamata Research Manager

Our mission is to contribute to excellence in education through research and development of educational assessments which meet current and future demands. Current educational reforms in Japan have two main objectives. The first objective is to ensure that students acquire fundamental knowledge and skills.

The second objective is to foster human resources who can approach and solve problems through active engagement and collaboration with others with diverse backgrounds in the global, knowledge-based society. The second objective calls for certain generic competencies such as identifying and solving problems, as well as autonomous and collaborative attitudes and orientations. The central concern in the current and future education is how to foster such abilities and attitudes and how to measure and evaluate them.

In response to these trends, we conduct academically-sound surveys and, studies, and disseminate the results, findings, and ideas to the public. Our research topics range from diagnostic assessment of subject-based knowledge and skills for effective learning, to assessment of generic and non-cognitive skills which is receiving growing attention.


Current Research Topics

  • ・Methods for comprehensive evaluation of college readiness and measurement of generic skills in accordance with college admission policy reforms
  • ・Assessment of skills and attitudes for life-long learning
  • ・Assessment embedded in learning materials
  • ・Item response theory (IRT) and related psychometric methods
  • ・Bayesian statistics and its application to psychometrics
  • ・Computer based testing (CBT) systems and databases for large-scale assessment