It is not an introductory text per se but every teacher should read The Cambridge Handbook of Expertise and Expert Performance or the somewhat more targeted precursor Road to Excellence.
Not all of the content is related to the kind of knowledge transfer and skill development you are after so some parts are more worthwhile than others.
During my teaching degree we were exposed to all sorts of material on how best to teach but as you alluded to it is a field where it is perhaps a little difficult to filter out what really works from convenient ideas. Abraham Maslow, Edward de Bono and Howard Gardener were some of the more popular education related authors. Maslow I appreciated particularly since he speaks of how people are motivated. And really, once you have your material designed such that people actually get engaged with learning it most of the problem is solved!
I want to learn what's well-understood about education. I expect to launch myself into some endeavors in teaching the first few levels of epistemic and instrumental rationality - ie., critical thinking and problem solving. I'm a little suspicious, though, of the scattered educational texts that I've so far read. In particular, education seems like a field where it's easy to have motivated thoughts, and hard to gather good data.
With my background (Math and CS) I'm a little at sea in educational literature. Does anyone know of good, reductionist-grade or evidential-grade, introductory texts in education?