Tacit Knowledge

Tacit knowledge tends to reside within the heads of knowers, whereas explicit knowledge is usually contained within tangible or concrete media.

However, it should be noted that this is a rather simplistic dichotomy. In fact, the property of tacitness is a property of the knower: that which is easily articulated by one person may be very difficult to externalize by another. The same content may be explicit for one person and tacit for another.

Tacit knowledge management is the process of capturing the experience and expertise of the individual in an organization and making it available to anyone who needs it. The capture of explicit knowledge is the systematic approach of capturing, organizing, and refining information in a way that makes information easy to find, and facilitates learning and problem solving. Knowledge often remains tacit until someone asks a direct question. At that point, tacit can become explicit, but unless that information is captured for someone else to use again at a later date, learning, productivity, and innovation are stifled.

It’s interesting to see the characteristics of Tacit Knowledge applied to Grammar education.