🤖 AI Summary
This study investigates the potential distorting effects of high-stakes standardized testing on the coverage of information education content and students’ metacognitive self-assessments. Leveraging longitudinal survey data from University of Tokyo freshmen spanning 2006–2026 and drawing on the backwash effect framework, it disentangles the distinct impacts of the 2013 and 2022 curriculum reforms and the 2025 inclusion of “Information I” in the national university entrance examination. By innovatively integrating long-term panel data with a backwash analytical lens, the research finds that the 2013 reform did not induce a cognitive discontinuity, whereas the impending 2025 exam change significantly increases students’ self-reported exposure to computer science content. However, this shift stems primarily from altered judgment criteria rather than genuine gains in competence, thereby revealing the constitutive role of assessment regimes in shaping learners’ self-perceptions.
📝 Abstract
Despite the recent intensive development of secondary education curricula and assessments in informatics, the impact of assessments has not been well studied in this field. Since informatics education covers a diverse range of content, from computer science knowledge to ICT skills, careful consideration is needed to prevent assessments from distorting education. This study investigates the impact of introducing ``Informatics I'' into the Common Test for University Admissions in Japan, as an example of a large-scale, standardized, high-stakes assessment in 2025. As the data source for this analysis, this study uses a questionnaire that has been administered every year from 2006 to 2026 to all first-year students at the University of Tokyo. The questionnaire asks students for their self-perceptions of the information-related knowledge and skills they studied and acquired in high school. Using these data, we conduct a longitudinal study of the 2013 curriculum reform, the 2022 reform, and the introduction of the new entrance examination. We attempt to isolate the impact of the entrance examination through two comparisons: between the 2013 curriculum reform and the 2022 reform; and between direct-entry and gap-year students among those entering in 2025, who followed different curricula but took the new examination. We use the theoretical framework of the washback effect as a lens for interpreting these differences. We found that (1) the 2013 curriculum reform produced no discontinuity in students' perceptions, whereas (2) the introduction of the new entrance examination in 2025 produced a sharp change, particularly in the proportion of students reporting acquisition of computer-science topics; and (3) this change is too large to be interpreted as a gain in proficiency, and is better understood as a shift in students' criteria for judging acquisition.