Knowledge Space Theory

Knowledge Space Theory (KST) is a combinatorial, set-theoretic framework for modeling and assessing human knowledge, introduced by Jean-Paul Doignon and Jean-Claude Falmagne in 1985. It represents a learner's competence as a subset of a problem domain, organizes all feasible competence subsets into a lattice called a knowledge space, and uses probabilistic inference to locate a learner within that space. The approach underlies adaptive testing and intelligent tutoring systems, offering a mathematically rigorous alternative to classical test theory.