Tacit Knowing and Implicit Learning in Teaching Practice

• In Event: AERA Roundtable Session 15
  In Roundtable Session: Theorizing and Reflecting on Teaching and Learning

Abstract

The aim of this paper is to explicate the cognitive characteristics of intuitive processes in teaching and to propose a framework for modeling such intuitive processes as inferences. Our account is based on Polanyi’s theory of tacit-knowing. We develop a framework that describes the tacit inferences that characterize tacit knowing in skilled performance. Teacher education might benefit from our findings in two ways. First, they suggest how learning and behavioral adaptation can occur in teaching practice without the involvement of conscious awareness. Second, the findings allow us to explicate more precisely how indirect instruction works, so that it can be employed in a more targeted manner in teacher training to foster action-oriented competencies. Here, we focus on nudging techniques, in particular.

Authors

• Rico Hermkes, Goethe University Frankfurt

• Gerhard Minnameier, Johann Wolfgang Goethe University

• Manon Heuer-Kinscher, Goethe University