This paper proposes the construct of metacognition as a potential bridge between the concerns of educators and the concerns of researchers who study cognitive development. In so doing, it highlights, as another bridging construct, the phenomenon of transfer, or, more precisely, the absence of transfer. The difficulty of achieving transfer of learning from one context to another is a problem that cognitive development researchers and educational practitioners are both aware of and appreciate as fundamental to their respective concerns. The two constructs are connected, in that a key to transfer lies in metacognition. In inquiry learning research, students display the intra-individual variability in strategy use that microgenetic studies have found to be the norm. Development consists of shifts in the frequencies with which different strategies are chosen for application. To explain developments, it is necessary to turn to the meta-level of functioning. If nothing has been done to influence the meta-level, new behavior will quickly disappear once the instructional context is withdrawn and students resume meta-level management of their own behavior. The growing reliance on standardized testing of basic skills poses a grave danger to the quality of education. Better definitions are required of what it means to be an educated person. The skills of inquiry should be central to such definitions, and these skills need to be understood as not just as performance tools, but with respect to their meta-level structure. (Contains 1 figure and 24 references.) (SLD)