As a consequence of our interest in analyzing practical knowledge we will investigate how it is possible to operationalize what is often called ‘tacit knowledge’. There is a risk, it seems, that operationalizations of tacit knowledge recedes into either mentalistic concepts or motor skills schemata. Our aim is to illustrate that what is often regarded as tacit knowledge could with Dewey’s transactional understanding of knowledge be reformulated in a way that make this so called tacit knowledge educative and observable.

Empirical research regarding ‘tacit knowledge’, like inquiry which emphasizes learning theories, often implies different transfer problems. The concept of ‘tacit knowledge’ is often use to explain the kind of “hard to tell” knowledge possessed by certain individuals or institutions. From an educational point of view it is important to show that ‘tacit knowledge’ is not tacit in the meaning impossible to pass on to others. That would be to mystify this knowledge. And more important, it goes against our every day experience of learning. We have all learned how to ride a bicycle, interact with different people in different ways, practice a certain hobby or a certain sport properly. If we were asked to explain how we are actually capable of all these things we would probably get ourselves into intellectual problems. This is, because it is not such an easy thing to give account of all these capabilities without showing overt actions within the activity. A purported empirical problem is that if we were able to articulate this knowledge it could be claimed that this articulation actually is another kind of knowledge.  This leaves us with behavior. In an overview of empirical studies regarding ‘tacit knowledge’ Gourlay (2006:64) formulates this methodological challenge in following words: “Where knowledge could readily be articulated it is difficult to see how it warrants the adjective ‘tacit’ […] It might have been tacit at the point of use […] but this raises the issue of how to operationalize ‘point of use’.” One way to solve this purported empirical problem (‘point of use’) is to revisit the old dualism between body and mind. John Dewey and Gilbert Ryle here show collective theoretical lineages in the disregard of the body-mind dualism. Ryle tried to convince us that “Overt intelligent performances are not clues to the workings of minds; they are those workings” (1990: 57). And Dewey made it a mission to show us “that the habit of regarding the mental and physical as separate things has its roots in regarding them as substances or processes instead of as functions and qualities of action.” (Dewey, 1928:6). This reshape the old body-mind problem – how does outer observed behavior correspond with internal matters? – which is related to the studying of action and behavior. It is, as we will show, also a very methodological remark.

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