The Shapes Taken by Personal Professional Knowledge

Abstract

This chapters and Chap. 5 provide complementary accounts of knowledge. This chapter is a primer on knowledge. It focusses on the individual professional person – on personal professional knowledge. We show why it is useful to distinguish between different kinds of knowledge – public, organisational and personal, codified and non-codified, tacit and explicit – and we develop our argument about relations between knowledgeable action and actionable knowledge: the kinds of knowledge that help get things done in practical situations.

Before we can speak further about epistemic fluency, we need to say more about what we mean by knowledge and knowing . It is impossible to describe professional knowledge in a simple uniform way. The fundamental message coming from research is quite consistent. Human beings, including professional workers and experts, draw upon a variety of knowledge types ; they learn this knowledge and draw upon it in their professional practice in a variety of ways (Argyris, 1993; Bereiter, 2002; Collins & Evans, 2007; Collins, 2010; Davenport, 2005; Eraut, 1985, 1994, 2010; Ericsson, 2009; Farrell, 2006; Gromman, 1990; Harper, 1987; Hoffmann & Roth, 2005; Schön, 1995).

When it comes to describing what constitutes personal professional knowledge , it becomes clear that, from a cognitive standpoint, this knowledge is not so dissimilar from the general knowledge that one develops through, and draws upon in, everyday life. In fact, almost all the types of knowledge that are used to characterise expertise have their counterparts in accounts of general knowledgeability . For example, Bereiter’s (2002) dissection of the main aspects of knowledgeability – stable, episodic, implicit, impressionistic and regulative knowledge and skill – has much in common with Eraut’s (1994, 2009, 2010) depiction of professional personal knowledge and capability : codified knowledge, accumulated memories, personal understandings, self-knowledge, metaprocesses and know-how (see Table 4.1). These aspects of knowledgeability are closely associated with distinct kinds of memory, and, as Donald (2010) notes, they are likely to stand as functionally identifiable cognitive subsystems which have different learning and retrieval characteristics and could function with some degree of independence. For example, episodic memories usually result from a single encounter, while skills are learnt gradually through repetition.

Table 4.1 Some common aspects of general knowledgeability and personal professional knowledge , drawing on Bereiter and Eraut

However, there is more controversy about how these different aspects of knowledgeability are implemented by the human brain and how they relate to each other. There are even deeper differences about what counts as knowledge and about how what one knows connects to language , perception and action , both individual and collective. How does culture , with its particular symbolic and material structures and representations, and how do workplace settings, with their tools and physical environments, shape and get shaped by (professional) ways of knowing ? These questions are far from trivial. Getting the right answers is very important for educators who are helping university graduates and practitioners to develop professional knowledgeability that links the (largely representational ) knowledge usually learnt in classroom environments with the (largely performative ) knowledge relevant to workplaces.

To provide a general sense of what kinds of capacities professional knowledge may involve, this chapter summarises some useful distinctions made in the literature about different kinds of knowledge and what those differences may entail.¹ We focus on knowledge and ways of learning that are related to the epistemic challenges discussed in Chap. 3 and address the following question:

What kinds of problems underpin the relationships between theory and practice , general capabilities and situated performance , and are the right questions being asked by those trying to resolve such tensions?

We start this chapter by introducing our notion of knowledge and how it is entangled with action and professional practice. While our main focus in this chapter is personal knowledge , successful performance in modern workplace settings cannot be understood by isolating the personal capacities of individuals from broader institutional contexts. So in Sect. 4.2, we introduce some other notions of knowledge in professional work and discuss the relationships between personal , public and organisational knowledges . After setting this background, we turn to the question above. In Sect. 4.3, we discuss some dichotomies between learning for doing and learning for understanding that are common in the representational accounts of knowledge which we presented in Chap. 3. After that (Sect. 4.4), we elaborate on this dichotomy by making a shift to the performative accounts of knowledge and discuss the relationships between knowledge as possessed and knowing as skilful performance. As much of the discussion about the challenges in professional learning and performance revolve around the links between explicit and tacit knowledge , in Sect. 4.5 we turn to these two kinds of knowledge . We point out that traditional views of tacit knowledge obscure some important qualities of tacitness and make learning and teaching of some kinds of actionable knowledge unnecessarily covert and disconnected from explicit knowledge . In Sect. 4.6, we bring these key theoretical insights together and provide an example of how different kinds of knowledge and ways of knowing lean on each other in situated knowledgeable performance . We argue that knowledgeable action and actionable knowledge blur the boundaries between understanding and doing . However, various kinds of knowledge and knowing can be distinguished, and a better understanding of their nature and relations can improve designs for professional education.

4.1 What Knowledge Is

Questions of knowledge and knowing have been central concerns in many domains of study, and in this chapter we will draw particularly on philosophy and cognitive science. Philosophers mainly focus on fundamental theoretical questions about knowledge, such as its limits, sources and nature, and related notions of truth, belief and justification. Cognitive scientists mainly focus on empirical questions about human thinking, such as cognitive processes and structures, beliefs, motivation, learning and performance. More recently, questions of knowledge have become a major concern in the field of psychological epistemology , which integrates philosophical and cognitive interests in human knowledge, knowing, learning and performance (Chinn, Buckland, & Samarapungavan, 2011; Muis, Bendixen, & Haerle, 2006; Royce, 1974):

Knowledge , then, is defined as those cognitions of an organism’s cognitive structure (psychological perspective) that are epistemologically justifiable (philosophical perspective). (Muis et al., 2006, p. 11)

However, the question of what counts as justification is far from straightforward when one refers to knowledge that underpins professional performance. Much of this knowledge is expressed in terms of skill , action and relations with the external environment , rather than in validated and justified explicit statements. For example, Hoy and Murphy (2001) note that ‘knowledge ’ often refers to factual, externally verified ‘content’ which is organised in certain logical ways and justified, whereas ‘belief ’ usually refers to propositions and ideas that individuals feel to be true, irrespective of external validation or justification.

However, as Southerland, Sinatra, and Matthews (2001) state:

Distinctions between knowledge and belief , complex and confusing at the theoretical level, seem to become hopelessly blurred at the empirical level. (Southerland et al., 2001, p. 348)

This particularly applies to professional knowledge , where logically and experientially² organised ways of knowing revealed through skill and action are intertwined with value judgements , dispositions , conceptions and other psychological constructs which are neither necessarily logical nor particularly rational and which rarely gain the status of ‘knowledge ’ in the rigid philosophical treatments or rational operationalisations of expert knowledge .

Following other research on professional practice and expertise, we use the term ‘knowledge ’ in the broadest sense, to include justified propositions, hunches, beliefs , know-how , skills , habits , tacit knowledge and other constructs of human thought and behaviour expressed in language , action and other kinds of performance (Eraut, 1994; Hoffmann & Roth, 2005; Hoy & Murphy, 2001; Murphy & Mason, 2006; Southerland et al., 2001). These constructs include entities that have different epistemological status – such as externally verified facts, beliefs , values and moral judgements – which involve different relationships between phenomena and what is thought to be true, as well as how things might be known.

The meaning of one’s propositions or behaviours is not defined solely by individual words or by a particular state of mind but also by the activity in which one is engaged and the totality of the judgements available. Intelligibility – making sense of something as being such and such – is inherited against a background of prior understandings and experiences, in relation to which one comes to make sense of the situation and to know new things:

… what we believe is not a single proposition, it is a whole system of propositions. (Light dawns gradually over the whole.). (Wittgenstein, 1969, p. 21 §141)³

And only within this system has a particular bit the value we give it. (op. cit., p. 52, §410)

In order to make sense of actions and statements, we must share a background with(in) which we interpret them and attach meanings. Practices , by being socially and historically constructed, constitute ‘fields of action intelligibility’ (Nicolini, 2013, p. 172) which provide shape to the situation and inform practitioners about what makes sense and how they should proceed next. Practice , thus, provides a background with(in) which one distinguishes between what is reasonable and what is not, or, in a strong sense, what is true and what is false.

So, practical knowledge is not so much defined by an objective certainty of propositions, as by shared ways of seeing, a shared sense of relevance and similar ways of responding – a shared ‘form of life’ (Wittgenstein, 1953/2009, 94e, §241). Professional knowledge, from this perspective, is a tool for interaction with the world: a tool that is used, mastered and produced in situated knowing (Cook & Brown, 1999; Nicolini, 2013):

… knowledge is conceived largely as a form of mastery that is expressed in the capacity to carry out a social and material activity. Knowledge is thus always a way of knowing shared with others, a set of practical methods acquired through learning, inscribed in objects, embodied, and only partially articulated in discourse . Becoming part of an existing practice thus involves learning how to act, how to speak (and what to say), but also how to feel, what to expect, and what things mean. (Nicolini, 2013, p. 5)

Learning such knowledge is not only a matter of acquiring shared meanings but rather of developing capacities for establishing functional relationships between meanings, environment and activity. Brown, Collins and Duguid (1989) put this neatly, in explaining how people learn, and learn to use, conceptual knowledge , in a tool-like way:

People who use tools actively rather than just acquire them, by contrast, build an increasingly rich implicit understanding of the world in which they use the tools and of the tools themselves. The understanding, both of the world and of the tool, continually changes as a result of their interaction. Learning and acting are interestingly indistinct, learning being a continuous, life-long process resulting from acting in situations.

Learning how to use a tool involves far more than can be accounted for in any set of explicit rules . The occasions and conditions for use arise directly out of the context of activities of each community that uses the tool, framed by the way members of that community see the world. The community and its viewpoint, quite as much as the tool itself, determine how a tool is used. (Brown et al., 1989, p. 33)⁴

Such knowledge is not simply a matter of mind and skill, or of environment and activity. Rather, it arises from relationships created between mind, skill, environment and activity (Yinger & Hendricks-Lee, 1993).

A corollary of this position is that we do not bother much about specific distinctions between expertise , competence , capability and other such terms that are used to describe different levels of proficiency in specific professional domains (see, e.g. Eraut, 2007, 2010). Rather, following Collins and Evans (2007), we adopt a more flexible, socially shaped and situated view of expertise , acknowledging that expertise includes various kinds of specialised knowledge and performance: from ‘ubiquitous expertise ’ that exists broadly within a culture and can often be taken for granted through ‘interactional expertise ’ that allows one to participate in a specialised discourse and to ‘contributory expertise ’ that allows one to actually do professional work. (We develop this in more detail later in the chapter.) Expertise , from this perspective, is skilful performance informed by particular kinds of knowledge and ways of knowing , recognised within a culture.

4.2 Public, Personal and Organisational Knowledge

Expertise needs to be understood in terms of a relationship between professional work and professional knowledge . In this section, we distinguish between public and personal knowledge and then introduce the idea of organisational knowledge . Public knowledge is knowledge that is made broadly available within a culture, including within a profession. Personal knowledge is what an individual knows and is able to do. Organisational knowledge (including group knowledge ) is knowledge that is available to everyone within a specific organisation or group. Organisational knowledge emerges at the intersection between, and as an entanglement of, the public and the personal. Understanding these three kinds of knowledge – and their interactions – offers an important insight into professional performance.

4.2.1 Public Knowledge

Public knowledge is what Bereiter (2002) calls knowledge outside the mind. It includes both codified and non-codified knowledge.

Codified public knowledge includes all the knowledge that is captured in some inscribed form.⁵ Thus, it can be shared and used beyond the communities, sites and people involved in its origination. It includes knowledge that is associated with publications in books and journals, with special value being given to knowledge that has been peer reviewed and which has gained the level of acceptance needed for incorporation into a discipline or profession’s knowledge base (Eraut, 2010). It also includes knowledge embedded in other material inscriptions that are available to members of a professional community, including resources used within programs of education, qualification standards, professional databases and informal resource collections. Broadly, this knowledge has the qualities that Bereiter (2002) associates with ‘conceptual artefacts ’ (see Chap. 8).

Non-codified public knowledge is knowledge that is usually described as embedded in cultural practices . It is what professionals learn through participation. People usually describe this knowledge as cultural knowledge and take it for granted. Some of this knowledge has a sociocultural character and is embedded in the discourses and practices of professional communities . Some of it is situated and emerges from engagement in local activities – relationships among the people, tools, artefacts, historical, cultural, material and social environment in which practice takes place. In both cases, this knowledge is not available beyond the communities and practices concerned and can be learnt only by socialisation and engagement.

Much public knowledge has both codified and non-codified qualities. For example, Cook and Brown (1999) describe knowledge that is used to produce flutes in some world-class flute manufacturing companies. They note that there is a body of shared knowledge, such as concepts about the parts of the instrument, how they function and are connected together, rules describing how a job should be done and which tool should be used for which function. There are many dimensions and tolerances in how different parts should work and fit together. However, many of those dimensions are not used by experienced flute makers and are not taught directly to apprentices. Rather, the quality of the instrument is judged by hand or eye, by passing the flute back and forth from one flute maker, who works on one part of the instrument, to another flute maker, reworking the flute until both agree that the flute has the ‘right feel’. The flutes produced by such companies have a distinct quality and character, and knowledgeable flautists around the world can recognise the feel of the flutes produced by world-class brands. Such flute making is impossible without the individual skills needed to produce instruments with the ‘right feel’.

4.2.2 Personal Knowledge

Personal knowledge refers to personal attributes, capacities and other qualities that underpin what Bereiter (2002) calls well-rounded knowledgeability . As Eraut (2010) suggests, such knowledge can be described as ‘the individual-centred counterpart to cultural knowledge’ (p. 38). There are various types of personal knowledge , such as procedural knowledge , propositional knowledge , practical knowledge , skills and know-how .

In specific professional contexts, personal knowledge can be described more narrowly – ‘what individual persons bring to the situation that enables them to think, interact and perform’ (Eraut, 2010, p. 37) or what Yinger and Hendricks-Lee (1993), drawing on Harper (1987), call ‘working knowledge ’: the kind of knowledge that is ‘ particularly useful to get things accomplished in practical situations’ (Yinger & Hendricks-Lee, 1993, p. 100). Other terms have been used for similar kinds of knowledge and knowing, such as ‘knowing in action ’ (Schön, 1995), ‘actionable knowledge ’ (Argyris, 1999), ‘action-oriented understanding ’, ‘personal practical knowledge ’ (Clandinin, 1985) and ‘metis ’ (Baumard, 1999).

Some personal knowledge can be explicit , that is, available to consciousness, or able to be put into words when the need arises. However, some personal knowledge is tacit or implicit , that is, one might know or be able to do something without an explicit awareness, and one may not be able to describe how one does something. ( Explicit and tacit could be broadly seen as personal – embodied and embrained – counterparts of codified and non-codified public knowledge : the former is available to consciousness, reflection or discourse ; the latter is enacted in doing.)

Public and personal and explicit and tacit are interrelated (Billett, 2008; Cook & Brown, 1999). Cook and Brown’s (1999) example of flute makers using and creating new individual and company knowledge in making flutes, and passing them back and forth between master flute makers and apprentices, is a good illustration of this. A part of flute makers’ knowledge is in those interactions themselves – it is a kind of ‘organisational knowledge ’.

4.2.3 Organisational or Group Knowledge

There are some other kinds of knowledge that occupy a large space between public and personal knowledge: such as community knowledge , organisational knowledge and group knowledge . Given this book’s concern with professional work and the fact that much professional activity occurs within organisational settings, we refer to this category of knowledge as ‘organisational knowledge ’. Organisational knowledge can be seen as a dynamic assemblage of cultural knowledge that is made available to everyone within an organisation or group and a dynamic collection of personal knowledges that jointly define what an organisation collectively brings to the situation and is capable of doing. It will normally include both explicit and tacit elements. The explicit knowledge may take the form of shared symbolic artefacts , such as rules, codes, organisational routines and codified propositions embedded in organisational artefacts . As Argyris and Schön (1996) put it:

When organizations are large and complex, their members cannot rely entirely on face-to-face contact to help them compare and adjust their private images of organizational theory-in-use. Even in face-to-face contact, private images of organization often diverge. Individuals need external references to guide their private adjustments. (Argyris & Schön, 1996, p. 16)

Such knowledge may be inscribed in records, such as files, message boards, manuals, databases, information systems and other kinds of organisational recordings. It can also exist in non-codified forms in established ways of acting or routines. As Nelson and Winter (1982) state:

… the routinization of activity in an organization constitutes the most important form of storage of the organization’s specific operational knowledge. Basically we claim that organizations remember by doing. (Nelson & Winter, 1982, p. 99, original emphasis)

This enacted organisational knowledge has two distinct aspects: collective capacity and individual capacity. On the one hand, this knowledge can be seen as a distinct emerging property of an organisation or a group (e.g. Kay, 1993). That is, organisational knowledge is more than the sum of the individual knowledges and related capacities of those who work in the group. Such knowledge is profoundly collective and cannot be reduced to discrete individuals. From this collectivist view:

…organizational knowledge is the set of collective understandings embedded in a firm, which enable it to put its resources to particular uses. (Tsoukas & Vladimirou, 2001, p. 981)

On the other hand, Tsoukas and Vladimirou (2001) observe that the open-endedness of the world ‘gives knowledge its not-as-yet-formed character’ (p. 989). Drawing on Polanyi’s claim that ‘All knowing is personal knowing ’ (Polanyi & Prosch, 1975, p. 44, original emphasis), they argue that it is individuals who put shared knowledge into action and there is always some improvisation in how people make sense of organisational propositions and how they enact this organisational knowledge in specific contexts and situations (see also Cook & Brown, 1999; Orlikowski, 2002, 2007; Weick, 1995, 2001; Weick, Sutcliffe, & Obstfeld, 2005):

Such knowledge may be formally captured and, through its casting into propositional statements, may be turned into organizational knowledge. While this is feasible and desirable, the case still remains that, at any point in time, abstract generalizations are in themselves incomplete to capture the totality of organizational knowledge. In action, an improvisational element always follows it like shadow follows an object. (Tsoukas & Vladimirou, 2001, p. 988)

From this point of view, an organisation’s working knowledge can be seen as a capability arising from its members’ joint capacities to make sense of situations and carry out their work. While this capability is a characteristic of an organisation, it is impossible without individual understandings and actions that constitute and materialise it. This knowledge is not a static property of individual or collective minds. Rather it emerges dynamically from the shared propositions and collective performance of individuals across contexts and situations over time.

4.2.4 Sociopolitical Knowledge

One special kind of knowledge that mixes the organisational and the public is sociopolitical knowledge – such as qualification standards and ethical codes. This kind of knowledge is not ‘conceptual knowledge ’, in the sense that it does not add understanding to the professional knowledge base, yet it plays an important role in defining and shaping the ‘expertise space ’ (Lampland & Star, 2009; Mulcahy, 2011). Eraut (2009) points to this kind of knowledge when he makes a distinction between competence and capability . He explains that competence , from the sociocultural perspective, is based on the notion of ‘meeting other people’s expectations’ (p. 6) and ‘being able to perform the tasks and roles required to the expected standard’ (loc. cit.). This expectation is socially defined, it varies across contexts and over time and the expected standard for competence may be a moving target related to a person’s years of experience, organisational roles and responsibilities. In contrast, capability is ‘everything that a person or group or organisation can think or do’ (loc. cit.). Eraut (2009) argues that competence can be seen as necessary for capability, but the reverse is not true. People and organisations usually have additional capabilities that go beyond the definition of their competences .⁶

Nevertheless, socio-materialistic accounts remind us that sociopolitical knowledge, such as standards, can play quite distinctive roles in knowing in practice. For one thing, as Timmermans and Epstein (2010) observe, different standards and agreements – such as the ISO 9000 quality standards that provide the basis for integrating firms and products on an international level – can form a fundamental infrastructure for coordinating shared work and modern life in general. But also, some standards may be very remote from knowledge enacted in professional performance. For example, in summarising his insights into how textbooks for teacher education programs have been revised after the introduction of new professional and occupational standards in the UK, Tummons (2011) remarks:

What is noteworthy, if you read and then compare different textbook editions from this period of time, is that the content of different editions remains relatively unchanged: certainly, the imposition over the last decade or so of two – quite different – sets of professional standards does not seem have impacted on the content of the books, apart from the fact that as such books are updated, the relevant standards are ‘plugged in’, in a manner akin to the ways in which I have to install new plug-ins for my web browser before I can access some forms of online content. (Tummons, 2011, p. 28)

4.3 Doing and Understanding

If successful task performance were impossible without correct understanding, human culture could not have gotten started. <…> In fact, all the technologies that brought the human race out of subsistence – metal working, leather preparation, the manufacture of cloth and glass, navigation, waterwheels and windmills, sailing boats, bread baking, brick making – had to be invented and developed in the absence of deep understanding, because such understanding has only become available since the scientific revolution, three centuries or so ago. (Ohlsson, 1995, p. 49)

Ohlsson (1995) makes a useful comparison between practical and declarative knowledge .⁷ Practical knowledge broadly covers conventional notions of practice and practical reasoning – what Ohlsson describes as the knowledge needed for accomplishing something in a convenient way. Such knowledge includes sensorimotor skills (e.g. riding a bike or driving a car), cognitive skills (e.g. calculating or playing chess) and a disposition to act in a particular way when one tries to achieve a certain goal in given circumstances (e.g. to move a car wheel when one wants to make a turn). The main outcome of learning such knowledge is competence ⁸ or ‘know-how ’ – which leads to effective goal attainment. Ohlsson argues that such learning starts from general methods (e.g. analogical reasoning) and increasingly becomes a more automatic, less conscious, simple, domain-specific skill. Such competence is generally acquired through extensive practice, and the medium for it is action.

He describes declarative knowledge as ‘knowing that ’, which includes both concrete facts and abstract (higher-order) knowledge, such as concepts, ideas, theories, schemas and principles.⁹ He argues that such ‘higher-order’ learning proceeds in the opposite direction to that taken in skill acquisition. It starts from a prior, poorly articulated understanding and increasingly becomes more conscious, explicit, elaborate and abstract. The main outcome of mastering such knowledge is understanding or ‘know-that ’. Such knowledge is acquired mainly through reflection , and the medium for it is discourse .

Ohlsson’s distinction is a useful starting point, but it distracts attention from the fact that elements of ‘knowing how ’ and ‘knowing that ’ are usually entangled in any specific (nontrivial) example of understanding or capability . It also obscures some differences between various kinds of expertise and between different types of explicit and tacit knowledge (see, e.g. Collins & Evans, 2007, and Sects. 4.5 and 4.6). However, it does shine a light on some important discontinuities between practice and theory or, as Ohlsson puts it, between ‘learning to do ’ and ‘learning to understand ’. In short, knowledge involved in the ability ‘to do’ is not the same as ‘higher-order ’ understanding of fundamental principles that may be relevant to such action, but which are not (in reality) either necessary or sufficient for the action concerned. Successful performance does not imply understanding , nor does understanding guarantee successful action – it is possible ‘to perform any task without understanding , by learning and doing the right actions’ (Ohlsson, 1995, p. 50, emphasis added).

Miettinen and Virkkunen (2005) make a similar statement:

Whereas the traditional epistemology defined knowledge in terms of symbolically represented, declarative knowledge (theories, models, concepts, facts), behavioural theories of organization define competencies in terms of established ways of action using the concept of routine . (Miettinen & Virkkunen, 2005, p. 439)

They point to further parallels between action and routine , symbolic knowledge and innovation , and argue that concepts, models and other symbolic forms of knowledge are instrumental in inducing learning and change in human practices. Eraut (2010), on the basis of an empirical study of early career professionals’ learning in workplace settings in the UK, draws similar conclusions and adds that fusing practice and theory , action and understanding requires effort:

… learning to practice and learning to use knowledge acquired in education settings do not happen automatically. <…> Learning to use formal knowledge in practical situations is a major learning challenge in its own right – it is not a natural consequence of learning knowledge on its own, and trying to employ that knowledge in practice without critical questioning of its appropriateness and effectiveness will not meet the challenge. Such learning also requires both time and support. (Eraut, 2010, p. 51, original emphasis)

What is the role of theoretical knowledge in practice? Ohlsson (1995) argues that declarative knowledge is fundamental for understanding, and there is increasing empirical evidence to suggest that this understanding supports and sometimes provides foundations for practice. For example, experts and novices, when they solve complex or unfamiliar problems, draw on large amounts of domain-specific propositional knowledge (Collins, 2011; Woods, 2007).¹⁰

The challenge in education, as Ohlsson observes, is that surprisingly little is known about how declarative knowledge is learnt and used.¹¹ Ohlsson makes two additional important points about why the propositional knowledge taught in educational institutions may not meet the needs of action. First, he makes a distinction between simple descriptive knowledge (facts ) and higher-order principles , concepts, ideas, schemas, theories and so on. He argues that more attention is paid to teaching the former, whereas it is the latter that really capture fundamental features of the domain. Second, he argues that understanding of general principles is learnt through, and used in, practices that are different from those involved in learning and exercising skills :

… human beings employ their understanding , not in action , but in the generation of symbols <…> Abstract concepts, ideas and principles find their primary expression in cultural products, not in goal attainment. In particular, there is a deep connection between abstract knowledge and discourse . The study of higher-order learning might therefore begin by asking what people do when they produce discourse. What are the canonical tasks that people carry out when they talk and write? (Ohlsson, 1995, p. 51, original emphasis)

Ohlsson suggests a set of general epistemic activities (such as describing, arguing and defining) for engaging in discourse that leads to higher-order learning. We discuss such activities in more depth in Chaps. 12, 13, 14 and 15.

However, one should note that what Ohlsson (1995) calls ‘understanding ’ primarily refers to ‘scientific understanding ’ of underpinning fundamental principles. This is different from ‘practical understanding ’ of underpinning principles to support action, such as useful heuristics, analogies or cases that are not necessarily grounded in scientific laws. But, as de Souza (2005) notes, even the latter kind of knowledge is different from the knowledge that underpins practitioners’ ‘know-how ’. Practical decision-making and understanding draw on two different ways of knowing and acting and two different forms of discourse :

Supporting decisions is not the same as supporting understanding and cognition, although the latter undeniably contributes to the former. One of the clearest distinctions between the two is perhaps that knowledge and action to support understanding is usually formatted in positive terms – explanations about how to achieve goals, how to carry out tasks and perform operations; information about the meaning of terms, the function and behavior of objects; and so on. Knowledge and action to support decisions is usually formatted in comparative and sometimes even negative, terms – analyses of costs and benefits involved in making choices, troubleshooting hypotheses, instructions for how to diagnose failure, and so on. (de Souza, 2005, p. 63, original emphasis)

4.4 Knowledge and Knowing

Ohlsson’s (1995) distinction is clear-cut – knowledge for understanding is not the same as knowledge for doing . Explicit knowledge is different from tacit . Learning and knowing for understanding are not the same as learning or knowing for doing :

understanding is a state of mind, not a process. There is no intrinsic connection between that state and any particular action . (Ohlsson, 1995, p. 50, emphasis added)¹²

Tim Ingold (2011) offers a complementary perspective on two rather different epistemological views of knowledge in practice . Drawing on Rubin (1988), he makes a (metaphorical) distinction between the view of knowledge as ‘complex structure’ and as ‘complex process’. From the complex structure viewpoint, knowledge is a certain configuration of mental representations that are acquired by an individual through some mechanism similar to ‘copying’ or ‘replication’, prior to the time at which they step into the world of practice. The application of such knowledge is relatively straightforward – one simply needs to match the structures in the mind and structures in the world through a mechanism that establishes the homogeneity between the two. From the complex process viewpoint, priority is given to the very act of knowing rather than structures or properties of the mind – ‘people know by way of their practice ’ (p. 159, original emphasis):

… far from being copied, ready-made, into the mind in advance of its encounter with the world, knowledge is perpetually ‘under construction’ within the field of relations established through the immersion of the actor-perceiver in a certain environmental context. Knowledge, in this view, is not transmitted as a complex structure but it is the emergent product of a complex process. It is not so much replicated as reproduced. (Ingold, 2011, p. 159, original emphasis)

Ingold notes that the distinction between the two viewpoints goes back to two different meanings of the word ‘process’. In the complex structure view, the verb ‘process’ is used in a transitive sense – knowing starts with perceived bodily sensations of the structures in the world and ends with the representations in the head. In the complex process view, the word ‘process’ is used in an intransitive sense. It does not have a clearly articulated beginning and end, but continually unfolds within practice:

It is equivalent to the very movement – the processing. (loc. cit., original emphasis)

However, once one looks at understanding and doing in professional work in organisational settings, the relationship between the two becomes more complicated.

Cook and Brown (1999) make a useful distinction between the ‘epistemology of possession ’ and ‘epistemology of practice ’. They explain that, historically, different forms of ‘what is known’ have been treated as something people or organisations possess, be it tacit or explicit , individual or group knowledge . While such knowledge is important, it does not account for what one can do. For example, when a mechanic fixes a car, his knowledge involves not only what he has and applies but also things he is doing:

… the epistemic work done, [which] needs to include both the knowledge he possesses and the actions he carries out. (Cook & Brown, 1999, p. 53)

Cook and Brown extend the view of knowledge as possessed with the view of knowing as a part of action :

… understanding of the epistemological dimension of individual and group action requires us to speak about both knowledge used in action and knowing as part of action. (loc. cit., original emphasis)

The former focusses on knowledge as understanding employed for making sense of the world and action ; the latter focusses on knowing as understanding created in this very moment of sense-making and action . It requires one to master a distinct kind of knowledge which is ways of knowing . They further note that knowledge and knowing form a dynamic couple with each other:

Knowing does not sit statically on top of knowledge . Quite the contrary, since knowing is an aspect of our interaction with the world, its relationship with knowledge is dynamic. Each of the forms of knowledge is brought into play by knowing when knowledge is used as a tool in interaction with the world. Knowledge , meanwhile, gives shape and discipline to knowing . (op. cit., pp. 70–71)

Therefore, some aspects of actionable professional knowledge , including ways of knowing , can be learnt in advance, prior to practice. However, learning for knowledgeable action necessarily involves practising, as some epistemic work is inevitably done and learnt in action and by action :

When a part [of a flute] is handed back to a previous worker, for example, it can come with a comment such as ‘this is a clunky one’. The flutemakers then hand the piece back and forth discussing its ‘clunkiness’. <…> [I]t is typical for an apprentice to work on flutes starting on his or her first day in the shop: he or she engages in the practice of flutemaking, and begins to acquire not only knowledge but also ways of knowing . An apprentice may be told explicitly that ‘these keys need to work more solidly’. But it is only through practice, through actual working jointly with other flutemakers on the piece, that he or she will ‘get a feel’ for what ‘solidly’ actually means in that shop (‘solidly’ could mean quite a different thing at one of the other workshops). When a master flutemaker says something such as ‘this is what we call clunky’ an apprentice can only know what that means by learning what it feels like – and a master flutemaker can only agree that an apprentice’s work ultimately feels right by feeling the piece. (op. cit., pp. 75–76)

We can illustrate the point with related observations from a different area: from studies of preoperative anaesthesia teams and apprenticeship in operating theatres (Hindmarsh & Pilnick, 2007; Koschmann, LeBaron, Goodwin, & Feltovich, 2011). A surgeon or anaesthetist cannot participate in an operation without substantial, explicit, high-order understanding : of the medical condition involved and of operating protocols. However, learning to participate in such work also involves developing nuanced perception and complex manual skills , such as how to make the right incision. Furthermore, performance and real-time coordination of a team’s work in the operating theatre is inseparable from what Hindmarsh and Pilnick (2007) call ‘intercorporeal knowing ’:

… participants become expert in knowing the bodily conduct of others in the anaesthetic room as one resource to coordinate their contributions to the team’s work. (Hindmarsh & Pilnick, 2007, p. 1398)

In summary, knowledgeable action and actionable knowledge blur the boundaries between declarative and procedural knowledge , between understanding and doing and between knowledge as possessed and knowing in practice.

4.5 Tacit Knowledge and Explicit Learning

Tacit, largely unarticulated kinds of knowledge and ways of knowing have often been considered as essential to fluent action (Atkinson & Claxton, 2000; Collins, 2010; Ingold, 2011; Sternberg & Horvath, 1999) and also as the main source for professional innovation (Nonaka & Takeuchi, 1995; Victor & Boynton, 1998). Such knowledge is usually considered to be deeply personal, developed through practice and, in essence, impossible to teach in explicit ways. However, there is more than one kind of tacit knowledge. Recognising these different kinds means that one can be more certain about relations between tacit knowledge and explicit learning .¹³ We follow Harry Collins (2010) in distinguishing three kinds of tacit knowledge , which he calls ‘weak’ (or relational), ‘medium’ (or somatic) and ‘strong’ (or collective).

Weak tacit knowledge is knowledge that is (in principle) explicable, but generally is tacit because of its relational character – that is, because of relations between people in society. For example, some knowledge is concealed (professionals may want to keep it secret), unrecognised (one may fail to appreciate someone else’s need to know), ostensive (it is easier to communicate by showing rather than explaining) or logically demanding (taking a long time to explain and learn). In short, weak tacit knowledge is tacit only because of social contingencies, not because it cannot be made explicit and thereby rendered in a form that can be communicated, taught and learnt. It is often merely a matter of applying effort or willingness to make relational tacit knowledge explicit and shareable.

Medium tacit knowledge is perhaps the most familiar kind of tacit knowledge – it is somatic. It too can be made explicit, but it is ‘inscribed’ in the human body and brain. Thus, there is a ‘somatic limit ’, and this knowledge cannot be learnt easily because of the way the human body and brain work (e.g. a person can read a description of how to ride a bicycle, but the knowledge in use while balancing the bike is somatic; a teacher can be shown how to use a new interactive whiteboard, but it will take time for her to fine-tune her hand movements to the device and to integrate its use, with minimal conscious attention, into the flow of classroom action). Complex somatic learning usually involves significant practice, yet various learning strategies that make somatic knowledge more explicit, such as physical and emotional awareness and cognitive reflection, usually enhance this process (Green, 2002).

Strong tacit knowledge is so called because it is a collective tacit knowledge and is not reducible to the personal or explicit . It depends on a sensitivity to social context and moment-to-moment interaction. The ‘right’ way to do certain things can only be learnt through experience and through socialisation with others in a similar context (e.g. learning how close one may stand to a stranger in a queue, learning how to drive in dense traffic). An example from our own research on preparation for school teaching could be resolving whether a particular pedagogical method would be acceptable, given what is mandated in the national curriculum, the likely willingness of the students to cooperate, the views of other teachers, etc.

Action involving tacit knowledge may involve all three kinds of tacitness. For example, consider the tacit knowledge involved in a teacher’s ability to manage a classroom effectively. Some of it may be weak tacit (e.g. an experienced teacher may be able to explain his/her key classroom management principles), some may be medium (e.g. even knowing these principles, a young teacher may need time to practice his voice pitch, tone, volume and other embodied skills) and some may be strong (e.g. the classroom management strategies may need significant adjustment if the teacher moves from a boys to a girls school). While some parts of this might be learnt separately (e.g. a teacher may learn motor skills to control his voice level before going into the classroom), they still have to be coordinated together into a more complex skill (e.g. using motor skills in a socially sensitive way).¹⁴

Drawing on the example of riding a bicycle, Harry Collins (2011) further notes:

No amount of explanation will enable the novice to get on a bike and ride it at the first time of trying. The skill of bicycle-balancing (as opposed to riding in traffic) is individually embodied rather than collectively embodied. Physical skills of this kind require changes in the material form of body and brain. The same is true of what we might call ‘embrained’ abilities such as mathematically expressed theorizing – this requires ‘mental muscles’ to be trained and exercised as the tacit abilities are acquired. (Collins, 2011, p. 282, emphasis added, author’s footnote omitted)

Collins points out that ‘bicycle balancing’ is not the same as ‘bicycle riding’, as the latter involves social conventions of traffic and is therefore a much more complicated skill . Nevertheless, he notes that even basic learning usually involves language :

Imagine finding a bike for the first time on a desert island! How would one come to understand that this spindly thing could be balanced and ridden? (op. cit., p. 295)

He notes the importance of being aware of different ‘muscles’ and of training those ‘muscles’ that are not strong enough. However, these ‘muscles’ should be trained in a social ensemble, by linking physical skill and language in practical understanding. He puts the relationship between discourse and physical practice and individual and social performance in this way: seeing language as essential in the individual acquisition of practical understanding and physical practice as central for learning practical language :

…language is, and must be, more central than physical practice in individual acquisition of practical understanding . <…> Physical practice remains central to human culture but its influence is at the collective level at which languages are formed, rather than the individual level at which practical abilities are acquired. (op. cit., p. 271)

Collins’ view of tacit knowledge contrasts with many traditional views that see the tacit as (primarily) embodied and unarticulated skill : as a complete opposite of the explicit . Collins (2010) rejects this boldly: ‘The tacit depends on the explicit !’ (p. 7). He goes on to say:

… many of the classic treatments of tacit knowledge – those that have to do with bodily skills or the way the human brain works in harmony with the body – put the emphasis in the wrong place. What the individual human body and human brain do is not much different from what cats, dogs, and, for that matter, trees and clouds have always done. While humans encounter bodily abilities as strange and difficult because we continually fail in our attempts to explicate them, there is nothing mysterious about the knowledge itself. It is knowledge that, in principle, can be understood and explicated by the methods of scientific analysis. In practice it may be hard to describe the entire picture but it is hard to develop a complete scientific understanding of many things. (Collins, 2010, pp. 7–8, original emphasis)

Collins acknowledges the importance of the body in the acquisition of knowledge, but he argues that this has to do with the nature of human beings not the nature of knowledge itself. He shifts the source of complexity of certain kinds of knowledge from the individual to the collective level:

… the nature of the body does, to a good extent, provide the conceptual structure of our lives, but that conceptual structure is located at the collective level, not the individual. (op. cit., p. 8)

This gives some useful insights into some of the challenges of the performative project (linking doing with being ) (Chap. 3). While performance may well help build expertise for doing tasks and interacting with others, it may not build an explicit understanding or deliberative problem-solving knowledge. It is difficult to apply concepts for reflecting on actions , if they were not applied in learning those actions in the first place. However, a narrowly focussed representational project (linking doing with knowing) is unlikely to succeed in helping students to learn the hardest parts of actionable knowledge , unless representations are seen as emerging , dynamic tools . Rather than positioning representations as final states, they are better seen as dynamically constituted, within collective and inherently situated performance – a process of (re)presenting.

In the last main section of this chapter, we want to bring these insights together by illustrating how different kinds of knowledge and ways of knowing – which are often seen as ontologically distinct and incompatible – are related to, and lean on, each other in skilful professional performance.

4.6 Actionable Knowledge

Ohlsson (1995) primarily focussed on how people learn two types of knowledge: declarative and procedural . It is also important to think about how professionals create knowledge for action, such as analyses of complex situations, problem–solutions and other kinds of explicit knowledge that support practical decisions and help attune their actions in performance – that is, creating declarative knowledge to support practice.¹⁵

As Yinger and Hendricks-Lee (1993) argue, bringing intelligence to bear on activity requires ‘working knowledge ’ – which we prefer to call actionable knowledge , knowledge that helps getting things accomplished in practical situations. Such knowledge does not exist independently of a person, but neither is it solely a matter of an individual and their mind. Rather, it involves a relationship between an individual, place and action. From a personal perspective, such knowledge primarily involves an ability to establish functional relationships between various aspects of the environment, self and action. Explicit knowledge , from this perspective, provides a repertoire of tools for making these connections knowledgeably.

For analytical purposes, it may be helpful to understand some further epistemic discontinuities between knowledge that underpins conceptual understanding, knowledge for action and knowledge entangled in action.

As we mentioned before, Eraut (2010) notes that time is a critical factor in professional practice: some decisions have to be made quickly, with limited deliberation before the action. In other words, some actions rely on perceptual sensorimotor knowledge and strategies at hand (e.g. reflex and intuitive skill), rather than more time-consuming deliberative, analytic or reflective thinking or the cognitive skills of problem-solving and decision-making (see de Souza, 2005). Thus, when one lacks time, habit takes over and substitutes the reflexive skill and the body for the reflective mind .¹⁶

Further, as Harry Collins (2010) notes, explicit knowledge involves different levels of explicitness and, accordingly, requires different levels of interpretation. For example, some knowledge may be already embedded in the physical environment and situation, such that it does not require significant explanation and interpretation (e.g. a teacher generally knows how to use a blackboard or how to introduce a new concept to students). Alternatively, some explication could be embedded in the design of affordances (e.g. an interactive whiteboard may have additional help features for assisting a teacher to understand how it works; a new textbook could provide a sequence of activities). However, some kinds of explicit knowledge may require communication and interpretation (e.g. a teacher may not know how to use an interactive whiteboard effectively even if she knows how it works or may not know how to implement a Jigsaw technique effectively even though she knows what it consists of). Even procedural knowledge , which is the main focus of Collins’ argument, may involve not only simple mechanical descriptions that mimic human actions but rather what he calls ‘scientific explanations’ of mechanical causes and effects. For example, an interactive whiteboard or a Jigsaw teaching technique can be applied in teaching in various ways. Understanding the instructional and psychological principles underlying the effectiveness of a tool or technique may allow one to adapt them flexibly to different situations. For example, knowing that a Jigsaw technique is effective because it promotes students’ engagement in self-explanation and active cognitive processing of information may help a teacher to modify various aspects of this instructional technique, while preserving its core educational qualities. Such underpinning ‘scientific knowledge ’ enables more flexibility in application – the possibility of responding to opportunities, constraints and other cues encountered in various situations. However, more flexible kinds of knowledge also require more time to do interpretational work. It is worth noting that this knowledge of ‘scientific explanations’ behind the causes of practical effects is still not the same as understanding the theoretical principles that underpin these effects, which would more closely approach declarative knowledge in Ohlsson’s (1995) terms (i.e. a teacher may still not know why self-explanation causes deeper learning).

Like Ohlsson (1995), de Souza (2005) and Perkins (1997) take the view that problem-solving and decision-making do not guarantee understanding and may not necessarily be a consequence of it. While knowledge work for building declarative knowledge (what Ohlsson calls ‘epistemic tasks ’) can be seen mainly as a discursive activity, including use of the language and inscriptions of a professional domain, knowledge work for supporting action usually involves an entanglement of intelligent problem-solving, engagement with the material and social environment and perceptual sensorimotor skill (e.g. thinking how to teach, creating an environment for teaching, adapting instructions to existing logistical constraints and teaching). While many aspects of this knowledge require fine-tuned perception and skills that as a rule develop slowly and require practice, this does not mean that these skills are firmly tacit and cannot be supported by explicit knowledge .

The distinctions between (a) learning to understand , (b) learning to do interpretational work and create knowledge that underpins action, (c) learning in doing in a concrete social and material setting and (d) learning to know while doing become clear if we map the epistemic activities that are central to some of the main kinds of human knowledge and ways of knowing side by side (Table 4.2).

Table 4.2 Linking learning for understanding and working knowledge for problem-solving , making and action

4.6.1 An Example: Knowledge in Teaching

Let us illustrate this by mapping out ‘the architecture’ of a teacher’s knowledge , and ways of knowing , involved in preparing for a lesson and teaching it. Let us imagine the teacher is planning to introduce a new scientific concept to primary school students – material properties – and wants to engage students in deep, authentic learning. Her choice is to do this by designing small inquiry tasks in which groups of students explore different materials and then consolidate each group’s findings (and students’ learning) using a Jigsaw technique. On what kinds of knowledge would she draw in making this decision?¹⁷

To get started, let us use our earlier classification of the main aspects of personal professional knowledgeability (Table 4.1) and map the main aspects of the teacher’s professional knowledge involved in this work. We start with the teacher’s stable or codified knowledge , which is a direct counterpart to Ohlsson’s (1995) declarative knowledge . Such knowledge, in scientific and technical domains, is usually seen as having several main parts (e.g. Perkins, 1986; Schwab, 1978):

• Propositional (What are the main elements of a phenomenon?)

• Structural (How are these elements related?)

• Explanatory (Why do things function in this particular way?)

Together, these three knowledges – ‘knowing That ’, ‘knowing How ’ and ‘knowing Why ’ – represent understanding of the principles underlying a phenomenon. It is what Bereiter (2002) called ‘stable’ aspect of knowledgeability : ‘That’, ‘How’ and ‘Why’ are inherent in the phenomenon rather than the knower. (To emphasise this, we use capital letters: ‘knowing How’, ‘knowing That’, etc.).

To put this knowledge into practice, the teacher needs procedural knowledge of suitable strategies, principles and other tacit and explicit ‘know-hows’ for performing relevant tasks (How should I do this and that?) and regulative knowledge for monitoring and adjusting her performance (How do I monitor what I do? What criteria do I use to evaluate outcome and performance?). This ‘know-how ’ and ‘know-for ’ represent understanding of the generative processes that produce the phenomenon (Garud, 1997). They are primarily dynamic aspects of a person’s knowledgeability, as these – ‘how’ and ‘for’ – are deeply inherent in the knower and her performance rather than in the phenomenon. (For this purpose, we use lower case letters: ‘knowing how’).

Even a novice teacher would bring to the situation at least some implicit and impressionistic knowledge derived from her experiences of similar situations and events – what do I know from my experience and what do I feel about it? Such experiential knowledge may lag behind her explicit thinking or rational justification, yet it turns out to be extremely influential in teachers’ and other professionals’ practical thinking (Olson & Bruner, 1996; Sternberg & Horvath, 1999). This knowledge, which Garud (1997) called ‘know-what ’ knowledge, largely comes from learning by using and represents an appreciation of the kind of phenomena worth pursuing.

The teacher also needs to bring to the task her contextual knowledge of perceived affordances and constraints and her understandings of when her decisions and actions make sense (What do I know about the context? In what context do my intended actions make sense?). Such experiential and contextual knowledges often come from the memories of specific cases and other situated propositions and events. They often reside in the nexus between:

• (a) The knowledge inhering in the phenomenon (‘knowing That’, ‘knowing How’ and ‘knowing Why’)

• (b) A generative capacity for knowing (‘knowing how’ and ‘knowing for’)

• (c) Sensitivity to the context for embodied situated performance (‘knowing what’ and ‘knowing when’).

Such ‘knowing what ’ and ‘ knowing when ’ form a necessary part of the teacher’s actionable knowledge . They allow her to make critical judgements about the relevance, feasibility and appropriateness of her declarative and procedural knowledge and to decide how to act.

Let us now look into the teacher’s actions involved in designing and teaching such a lesson. What ways of knowing will be involved in the teacher’s construction of actionable knowledge and making knowledgeable actions ?

The first is knowledge for constructing a conceptual understanding that allows the teacher to assemble a (theoretically justified) foundation for a good lesson plan (see row 1 in Table 4.2). Borrowing from the classical design literature, such a conceptual assemblage could be called a ‘design concept’ (Cross, 2011). It draws on a sound understanding of the ‘content knowledge’ to be taught (e.g. material properties), pedagogical techniques to be applied (e.g. authentic inquiry, Jigsaw) and a web of other pedagogical and psychological concepts relevant to what and how this lesson will be taught (e.g. deep learning, active information processing, self-explanation, cognitive load). These declarative constructs would not be usable unless the teacher had procedural knowledge for assembling them into a new conceptual understanding¹⁸ of how to teach about material properties using inquiry and Jigsaw. For example, such procedural knowledge could involve a range of strategies for choosing pedagogical techniques that would engage students in deep, authentic learning, while simultaneously avoiding cognitive overload. This knowledge work would also involve a regulative aspect as the teacher would need to make judgements about the appropriateness of her conceptual solution. The knowledge that underpins such decisions may build on explicit criteria for deciding if the cognitive load that students would experience during the inquiry and Jigsaw is appropriate and the solution is, in general, good enough. However, the teacher is also likely to draw on her earlier experiences and implicit feelings of whether her blend of Jigsaw with various inquiry tasks would not overload students and, in general, feels right. The teacher’s arguments for justifying her solution are unlikely to be formulated in absolute terms and unlikely to be put under rigorous experimental scrutiny. Rather, as with many things designed for specific and everyday use, this knowledge will be formulated and justified in relational terms – of whether the proposed solution is good enough in the context of her intended practical activity.

The constructed ‘design concept’ is just one aspect of the teacher’s knowledgeable action, and alone would not necessarily result in a successfully designed lesson or classroom performance. To design the lesson, the teacher would also need to engage in practical problem-solving and put all the related conceptual constructs together into a more actionable form, such as a lesson plan. Such a plan could be implicit, but more likely will be expressed, at least in part, in a certain symbolic form and inscribed in a lesson planning document. While some elements of the knowledge involved in constructing conceptual understanding and in problem-solving inevitably overlap, this problem-solving activity also requires mastering some distinctive kinds of knowledge and ways of knowing (see row 2 in Table 4.2). For example, procedural knowledge for constructing conceptual understanding may involve various conceptual blending strategies that allow the teacher to see connections and integrate several conceptual constructs, such as active student engagement, cognitive load and Jigsaw. (That is, her students could engage in a deep, authentic exploration of just some aspects of the topic and learn other aspects from peers, which would reduce cognitive load and enhance deep learning through self-explanation.) Procedural knowledge for constructing the lesson plan, in contrast, would involve various strategies for designing, distributing and sequencing specific tasks for teaching specific content, using inquiry and Jigsaw to help achieve specific lesson aims in a specific context (e.g. use Jigsaw and authentic exploration for learning about material properties, but explain to students how to conduct a scientific experiment before they start authentic inquiry in groups). Problem-solving – which in this case is the lesson design – is a different way of knowing from constructing conceptual understanding for designing it. It draws on a distinct set of declarative knowledge about the elements, structure and function of a lesson plan and distinct procedural knowledge for designing all the elements of the lesson and distinctive relational knowledge which helps attune lesson planning to the context of the task.

To teach this lesson in a classroom setting, the teacher would further need knowledge that allows her to think through the social and material arrangements of the classroom and, drawing on her knowledge, skills and ways of engaging with the environment, to align her planned lesson with the social arrangements and material affordances of the specific setting, such as worksheets, blackboard position, room space, time, student bodies, habitual and explicitly orchestrated ways of interacting and doing things (rows 3 and 4 in Table 4.2). The actual teaching activity will further depend upon the teachers’ somatic knowledge to carry out actions skilfully: such as motor skills, clarity of voice, sensory perception , spatial attention and reaction to students’ behaviour (row 4 in Table 4.2). Social, material and somatic knowing draw on embodied, materially and socially situated, kinds of knowledge and ways of knowing . They are different from the conceptual and problem-solving knowledges which are usually expressed in formal vocabularies and grammars of disciplinary communities. Nevertheless, they are critical parts of a teacher’s actionable knowledge . Johnson (1989) expressed this vividly:

… we need to view a person’s understanding as their mode of being in, or having, a world. And this, of course, is not merely a matter of beliefs held and decisions made; instead, it is people’s way of experiencing their world, and it involves sensory experiences, bodily interactions, moods, feelings, and spatio-temporal orientations. To sum up, teachers’ personal practical knowledge would include the entire way in which they have a structured world that they can make some sense of, and in which they can function with varying degrees of success. (Johnson, 1989, pp. 362–363)

However, socio-materially situated and somatic knowledges are not entirely mysterious capabilities that can be learnt only by trial and error or rote copying and repetition. Even somatic capabilities, which are often considered as tacit and difficult to disentangle, can involve linguistic guidance and intelligent, mimetic epistemic actions that are attentive to the body and environment (see Table 4.2). Furthermore, different kinds of performative knowing are not independent and can be knowledgeably aligned with, and draw upon, each other in the teacher’s action. For example, if the teacher knows that her voice is not strong enough to command the students’ attention in a noisy classroom, especially when the students are working in groups, she could prepare handouts that describe the activity in more detail, so that at least part of this complex somatic work (and knowing) can be done by handouts (i.e. the combination of social and material knowing). But to be able to come to this decision, she must master a problem-solving strategy as well as construct conceptual knowledge that allows her to see the possibility of substituting some bodily skills (shouting) with the material and social affordances of a handout.

4.6.2 Drawing Some Implications for Professional Education

In summary, conceptual understanding , problem-solving , the skills needed to construct the material environment and orchestrate social arrangements and the somatic knowledge needed to act fluently are all aspects of knowledgeability , but, ontologically, they are distinct kinds of knowledge and ways of knowing. Epistemic activities for generating conceptual understanding cannot substitute for epistemic activities that underpin problem-solving , or one’s actions in configuring the social and material arrangements or body intelligence and somatic skills . Most importantly, they cannot substitute for an ability to integrate and coordinate different kinds of knowledge and ways of knowing in one knowledgeable course of action.

This analysis gives some insight into why typical representational projects are incomplete: they simply engage professionals in epistemic activities for building conceptual understanding and problem-solving , but do not necessarily engage in the epistemic activities for perceiving, co-constructing and acting in the social and material world.

Unless these different kinds of knowledge are related to action in more explicit ways, then knowledge to understand , knowledge to do , knowledge to make and understanding in action quickly become disconnected from each other and from the practical world. There is not much natural overlap between different kinds of knowledge, except experiences (‘know-what’) and contexts (‘know-when’) that unite rather than split mind, action, social and material world and body into a single act of knowing and acting.

However, higher education courses often tear this context apart too. For example, in teacher education, conceptual knowledge of pedagogy and educational psychology will be covered (if at all) in foundational courses and assessed by getting student to write essays and do other ‘conceptual’ tasks. Problem-solving skills, such as lesson planning and the design of instructional materials, will be taught in professional practice courses, by giving students the task of constructing lesson plans and developing teaching and learning resources. Such plans and resources will usually be generic, thus not tweaked to specific social arrangements , physical spaces and other aspects of the environment in which one would learn social and material kinds of knowledge and knowing. Somatic knowledge would usually be learnt during internships and quite commonly through blunt performance and repetition, with minimal attention to explicit aspects of knowledgeability that underpin a teacher’s bodily intelligence in the classroom. Reuniting these contexts, which are the main enablers for the development of tacit knowledge, would provide a viable starting point for integrating these different kinds of knowledge and ways of knowing.

That said, we should not forget that while different kinds of knowledge and ways of knowing are interconnected, they can be learnt and rehearsed individually. Merlin Donald (1990) reminds us that, as human beings, we have an extraordinary ability to ‘parse’ our own actions into their components and to practice, refine and then recombine and re-enact them in new events. This distinctive capability to parse and rehearse individual skills outside the practice is less clearly acknowledged than it should be in the performative projects of professional learning.

Various kinds of knowledge are discernible and useful for practitioners, and there is a benefit to learning different explicit ways of knowing that support various kinds of actionable understanding , including understanding how to make practical decisions, how to co-configure material setting, how to organise social interactions and how to adjust one’s bodily skill and action to the environment – in short how to play different kinds of epistemic games . We will develop this theme later in Chaps. 12, 13, 14, 15 and 16.

Our discussion, in this chapter, has primarily looked at professional knowledge and knowing from the perspective of the individual student-practitioner – what David Perkins calls a ‘person-solo’ perspective (Perkins, 1993). In the next chapter, we extend this discussion by turning our attention to the shapes of professional knowledge in collective situated performance – involving other people, language , symbolic media and material environments – a ‘person-plus’ perspective .