ABSTRACT
The study of human cognition and the measurement of educational achievement are beginning to cross intellectual and empirical paths. Current efforts to define the conditions of educational attainment with the integral use of assessments demand an explicit alliance of these disciplines. Cognitive research has described processes, strategies, and structures of knowledge that contribute to competent performance and identified the characteristics of performance change as subjectmatter competence develops. This work is contributing to a better understanding of what learning involves, to a theoretical and empirical base for measuring what has been learned, and to the formulation of methods for addressing certain aspects of the construct validity of performance assessments.
