“…The ability to "think," however, did not receive much attention in Japan until 1998, when the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology (MEXT) released the new Course of Study (guidelines for all elementary and secondary schools), which emphasized the importance of activities with "thinking." Unfortunately, according to the results of a survey conducted in 2014 (Okada, 2015), sixteen years after the 1998 Course of Study was issued, the introduction of thinking activities into classrooms had apparently done little to change the nature of teaching in high schools in Japan. In this situation, in order to nurture students to be successful in the twenty-first century, it is crucial and urgent for university teachers to teach students to think deeply and independently although they tend to pay more attention and spend more time on researching than teaching (The Nikkei, 2015, April 7, p.34).…”