[knollimar]

Theres is more than ine dimension to mastery.

What skill are you grading? Can you expect some students to be able to churn out the problems? Are they doing design work? Is it more inventive or more creative? Is there more than one solution? How rigorous is the solution?

My point is that you can design an exam to test for speed and ability to do the day to day well. You prepare for this exam with lots of practice. There are a few problem types but you might not have seen every one. There's a basic level of extrapolation you're expecting.

You can design an exam for abstracting theory, and you prep for this exam by doing the hardest problems you can find, reading more theory, etc. You might not have seen anything like this but the test is to use the tools you're given in a class well. The test is the extrapolation.

I had theory courses where I expected the latter and practical courses where I expected the former.

There's more than one type of mastery; I bet your math professors would get destroyed by gifted 14 year olds in algebra competitions that involved arithmetic and timing. Do those 14 year olds not have more mastery?