Content Mastery, Mental Process Command and Transfer Facility as Indicators of Intellective Competence and Targets of Measurement

Author: David Pearson

Consulting Editor: John Bransford

The problem of transfer in human learning and intellective performance is formative. The author of this paper is asked to explore the implications for educational measurement that flow from changing conceptions of transferring and the possibility that extant research has focused on the wrong dependent variable. Mastery of content is not the ends but the means. When applied to the notion of transfer, we have been looking for evidence of the transfer and use of the knowledge itself when the target might better be the mental processes that have been acquired in the process of engagement of such content.