Dear Edgrrr,

Some of this can be explained in terms of neurology, but learning
theory can also account for improvements to performance.

The thread has addressed this from one perspective, where Jason
asks, "Out of curiosity, do you think that a diver who "fixed" their
dive could explain, in words, pictures, gestures, etc., how they
implemented their fix?"

The answer is yes, though not perfectly. You've asked from the
viewpoint of neurology.

I'll answer from two additional viewpoints, learning theory and
coaching.

Jason mention "unconscious competence." The quality of
unconscious competence is a quality of mastery that arrives
in a large learning cycle that is generally modelled as unconscious
incompetence -- we don't something and we do not realize either
that we don't know or how MUCH we don't know. When we try
to learn, we develop conscious incompetence. We discover how
little we know and how much we have to learn. As we begin to
learn, we develop conscious competence -- we understand issues
and we know what to do. We begin to know how to do it. We
do not yet do it as smoothly or gracefully as we might. Finally,
after much practice, behaviors become ingrained and deep
understanding leads to mastery.

This is a broad-brush description of one relevant version of learning
theory.

The relation between explicit and tacit knowledge is a key to
learning. The principle of Donald Schon's work on reflective practice
(and the work he did on reflective practice with Chris Argyris,
as well as the work Argyris did on organizational learning).
Part of the aspect of the "fix" takes place before the time in
which we can improve practice under way. It takes place when
we learn to understand our practice, and it often takes place with
coaching from an experienced practitioner.

Learning to surface aspects of tacit knowledge and learning to
understand and describe different skills is a central aspect of
coaching.. Coaches are people who develop the ability to "explain,
in words, pictures, gestures, etc.," how they implement improvements
to performance.

Successful coaches are people who master the art of helping
others to improve performance based on the ability to use experience
and internalized forms of bodily experience and tacit knowledge by
observing and describing observed practice and describing and
showing how to adjust behavior for improved performance.

This is a short version, but I hope the idea is clear. There was a
thread long ago on "bicycle knowledge" in which I discussed these
issues at length, so I'll repost it here. It discusses how to ride a bicycle
rather than how to dive, but the issues are similar from a slightly
different perspective. (First posted to the list in 2001. If you want
to review the context and other contributions, check the archive.)

Interestingly, Terry Love brought up some information then, too,
on what we can learn about this from new forms of scientific
research.

The specific post was a response in a thread on tacit knowledge.
My comment had much to do with explaining the importance
of explicit knowledge in developing effective skills learning, as
well as the role that research and theory have to do with helping
us to learn as a group (human beings) about what ought to be
done.

Every sport I know has changed dramatically over the past
50 years precisely because athletes and their coaches have
worked with researchers of all kinds to understand the nature
of high-level performance, improvement to performance, and
expert performance in the many fields of athletic achievement
from diving and bicycle riding to tennis and high jump. These
improvements in every field rest on multiple research approaches
and integration into active practice of what we learn from the
many research streams. The same is true for such arts
of professional practice as surgery, computer programming,
nursing, bridge building ... the list goes on. These are the
arts that Herbert Simon would have described as "design
sciences."

The key is double-loop learning. Single-loop learning focuses
on what we learn, content. Double-loop learning focuses on
process issues: how to learn, reflecting on how we learn,
discussing and describing, articulating, rendering the tacit
explicit. Along the way, it often involves content loops.

While the powerful descriptive work of Schon and Argyris
gives us a new vocabulary, this is not a new art. One of my
favorite books is an edition of Miyamoto Musashi's (1982
[originally 1643]) Book of Five Rings. The Cleary translation
also includes Munenori Yagyu's book of family traditions. In
these, you see two masters of practice coaching others.
Musashi distills the experience of a life, rendering tacit
knowledge explicit. Yagyu was the greatest sword teacher of
his time and martial arts teacher to the shogun. Yagyu's book
offers an advanced view of learning. In comparison with
Musashi's direct, physical descriptions and linked description
of internal feelings and behavioral states, Yagyu develops a
richer discussion of social and cultural issues in learning.

We have fragments of similar texts dating back to ancient
Egypt and Confucian China.

What Argyris and Schon bring us is a more powerful vocabulary
based on centuries of intervening experience between the classic
times and our own.

It's not necessary to ask a neurologist to learn more about this,
though it might be interesting to hear what one might have
to say. Even so, few of us can really make use of neurological
findings in any direct way. In contrast, we can use the clear
and applicable work of such authors as Argyris and Schon,
or Musashi and Yagyu, and we can apply it to learning and
improving our professional practice skills -- as well as teaching
those skills or teaching research skills to our students.

The post on bicycle knowledge follows. As you'll see, some of
the questions on this list have gone around many times -- hopefully
at increasingly deep levels.

Best regards,

Ken Friedman


References

Musashi, Miyamoto. 1982. The Book of Five Rings.
(With Family Traditions on the Art of War by Yagyu
Munenori.) Thomas Cleary, trans. Boston and London:
Shambhala.



[From 2001 thread on issues in tacit knowledge and learning]


--snip--

Your post raises important questions. I am going to offer a challenge here.
I assert that much work has been done to answer these questions, and I am
going to challenge someone to find out what this means for design research
instead of simply naming the issues.

The problem with so much of our discussion in design research is a
steadfast refusal to read, and a tendency to neglect entirely the research
done in other fields that sheds light on the precise questions we ask.

Pluralism suggests that there is no need for a unified theory of bicycle
riding. This is so because the theories of bicycle riding arise from and
affect so many fields that a unified theory is impossible. Aspects of
bicycle riding involve physics, engineering, health care, preventive
medicine, and several branches of jurisprudence from marketing law and
liability law to education law and traffic law.

While there is no need for a unified theory on all that affects bicycles
and all that they affect, there are uses for multiple theories.

One of these theories specifically involves how to ride bicycles, how to do
it better, and this theory also touches on tacit knowledge.

Because we are good friends, I am going to risk being rude enough to say
that you are wrong that, "the act of riding a bike is not driven by any
theoretical understanding."

That depends on how you ride a bicycle and why.

As it happens, my father was an athlete and a coach. In early life, he
developed and ran schools and camps for children. He also taught dance. In
later life, he was a professor of physical education.

After the Second World War, he took an MA in education at Columbia
University Teachers College. His PhD in leadership and human behavior
followed much later. Only after I did my own graduate work did I come to
learn how profoundly that year at Columbia helped my father to shape his
thinking, and how much it gave him as a teacher and a coach.

You may think that people just get on a bike and learn how, but that
generally is not so. Some of the information and advice that we get
shortens the process dramatically. Because the theory of bicycle riding on
a primary level is not dramatically complex, and because we are so young,
we simply do not realize that we have had a theory lesson, and we do not
understand that we have been the beneficiaries of applied research.

When my father taught me to ride a bike, I got some very useful lessons
before I ever got on. These involved mechanical issues such as braking,
issues in the physics of biking involving guidance systems and steering,
and some important issues in basic physics deriving from Newton's laws.

I got a few practical tips right away on steering into a fall that saved me
many difficulties in contrast with other kids.

My father's rich ability to draw on appropriate theories, to articulate
them clearly and explain them well, and his ability to coach me in applying
them made me a good bike rider at an early age. Then, and only then, I
began the years of practice that embodied my bicycle knowledge,
transforming it into tacit knowledge.

However, this is only the first level. Just ask a champion rider if "The
only thing you need to learn after that is how to do it with no hands so
you can eat bananas and (crucially) put on the cap with the sponsor's logo
just before you cross the finish line."

Not so.

I know this, too, because my father was a coach. Moreover, I am willing to
assert that you actually know this is not so precisely because you are also
a coach for students and young professionals in your field.

The amount of theoretical knowledge that goes into coaching a winning
athlete is astonishing. In a field such as bicycle riding, this includes
far more than the rudimentary physics and engineering that I learned when I
first rode a bike. Ergonomics, nutrition, physiology, biochemistry,
psychology, sports medicine, and far more advanced levels of physics and
engineering come into play. Since most competitive biking is done in teams,
team development, organizational development, organizational learning,
group psychology, and other issues come into play. These issues do not
affect individual riders, but they are important to champions. When
individuals work in teams, these factors operate on the team level and they
affect the individual performance of athletes in teams. Because teams
compete against other teams, a great deal of work is also done on tactics,
strategy, competitive sports psychology, game theory and more.

If you have ever seen the difference good coaching makes, you know how
important theory is. Setting a foot properly at the start of a race,
changing a stance, lifting or lowering the center of gravity, taking a turn
at a different speed or a different time make a difference to performance.

Some of these issues are even true for those who ride for general
recreation. Ride one way and end the day worn out and weary. Ride another
way, and come home refreshed after a pleasant spin in the country.

Now, to develop appropriate theories for bicycle riding, we can and do
engage many kinds of knowledge. Therefore, my second rude challenge is to
say that there is, indeed, a point in "asking a cyclist how it is done."

The practicing cyclist does not have every aspect of the knowledge, but he
or she has a great deal. Teasing out the fine distinctions of riding that
form the embodied knowledge of a good cyclist is important to researchers
in half a dozen fields.

Ultimately, this knowledge affects far more than bicycling, even
championship bicycling.

Bicycle riding offers important lessens on a great many issues. Consider
one issue alone: If we knew why some people enjoy using bicycles and others
don't, we'd have one key to a vast puzzle that involves issues of urban
transport policy, and therefore pollution and energy resource use. If we
knew how to design cities so that people were to shift their attitude
toward bicycle use and change their behavior regarding bicycles, we would
make enormous strides in several policy areas. This, of course, means we
must do so without creating other kinds of policy problems, and once again,
we are back to understanding, proposing, and testing theories.

Some of these theories specifically require us to elicit information from
bicycle riders.

Terry Love's post came in as I wrote this. As Terry notes, there are things
we can now learn about bicycle riding without asking riders. All these
things require an advance complex of theoretical knowledge and applied
technology centered on learning about bicycles.

Moreover, Terry points, correctly, to a rich stream of research that
demonstrates the effectiveness of theorizing and mental simulation in
increasing performance skills in many fields that depends on physical
skills, embodied behavior, and tacit knowledge.

Now there is one statement you make on which I agree entirely.

You write "many of the problems faced by designers would be helped by
methods to learn from tacit knowledge."

Here is where I get back to my earlier challenge on reading. There has been
a huge amount of fruitful work done on the management and uses of tacit
knowledge in such fields as psychology, philosophy, cognition studies,
education, learning theory, and more. An entire branch of knowledge
management addresses these issues, as does a rich stream of work in
organizational learning.

I feel that some of our debates on what you labeled "what is, or is not
admissible as research or knowledge," only exist because our field is young.

If you have noticed, those of us who argue strongly for a richer research
base have never challenged what is admissible as research or knowledge.
What we have called for is total freedom and creativity in the logic of
discovery balanced by rigor and discipline in the logic of justification.

I agree with Einstein's view that good theorizing requires the free play of
the imagination. I agree with Einstein's view that we develop robust
theories by examining free ideas with rigor, subjecting them to tests, and
developing them in a spirit of critical inquiry. These two frames of
inquiry form a whole in developing good research.

The point is that we do not YET need to transcend the present framework of
research.

Good research requires that we read widely enough to know what that frame
is.

In any specific case, good design research requires that we read widely
enough to discover the rich harvest of theoretical and applied information
that can readily be adapted to design.

The theme of tacit knowledge has come up repeatedly on design research
lists for many years. The concept is stated, and a name - tacit knowledge -
is put forward as an important issue for design research.

In most cases, this is simply a name. It is occasionally used in a way that
suggests that merely naming the concept will invoke its blessings on our
venture. I know you have never done this, Chris, but it has been done. It
is as though the simple existence of tacit knowledge opens new doors.

Knowing that something exists does not open the door to understanding. It
tells us where to look. To treat the invocation of a name as a
demonstration of understating is a form of nominalism, or worse, of
superstitious learning.

No one has yet mined the riches of five decades of solid work on tacit
knowledge for application to design research.

We all know that tacit knowledge exists and we all know that it is
important.

My challenge is this:

I assert that it is time for someone to review the literature of tacit
knowledge to discover and develop what is already known.

I assert that it is time for someone to use this foundation to adapt
available information and apply it appropriately to design research and
design practice.

If we are really to "transcend our present framework," this is what must be
done.

Transcending the present framework is a major challenge. This implies
progress. So far, I see many arguments from ignorance on the subject of
tacit knowledge. I also see many efforts to fill gaps that have long ago
been filled. Many of these efforts fill those gaps less adequately than
earlier attempts simply because they are built
without knowledge of prior art.

This is a challenge I will not undertake. I know how it should be done, but
I have a couple major research projects under way. I do not have the time.
Moreover, I am not one of those people who continually refer to tacit
knowledge as a solution to central problems in design research. If I were,
I would feel the responsibility to demonstrate my case.

This is a fair challenge.

It is inappropriate for researchers continually to refer to an issue that
is important to our field, using that issue to challenge other views,
unless they are willing to do the work needed to articulate the issue and
demonstrate how it may be applied.

In their work on knowledge creation, Nonaka and Takeuchi demonstrated that
new knowledge is created when we learn to understand and to articulate
tacit knowledge. Tacit knowledge always exists, and it will always exist.
The task of research is not to erase tacit knowledge. It is to bring
intelligence to bear on what is unknown or tacit, to locate and articulate
it, and to bring it forward in newly articulated configurations. New
situations and the very fact that formerly tacit knowledge has been
rendered explicit will lead to the birth of new tacit knowledge that must
then be rendered explicit. This is what gives rise to a knowledge creation
cycle.

Now it is time for someone to begin.

The references to tacit knowledge that crop up on our lists seem to suggest
that tacit knowledge constitutes an undiscovered island, a Cipango in the
unknown ocean of design research, visible on an old map just at edge,
somewhere near the drawings of the dragons and wind gods.

We have moved beyond that in every field of research but design research.

Tacit knowledge is no undiscovered island. Quite the contrary, it is a
large and well explored continent. Even though we have much to learn, we
know where it is, we understand its contours, and we have mapped some of
the great coastal regions with care. The inland remains unexplored,
particularly the mountainous territory where this continent touches the
continent of design research.

I have grown impatient with frequent references to this unexplored
continent. Psychologists, educators, philosophers, cognition scientists,
information theorists, and a host more have already been there.

Who is ready to find out what they have learned and do some serious
exploration to expand the map?

--snip--


-- 

Ken Friedman
Professor of Leadership and Strategic Design
Department of Communication, Culture, and Language
Norwegian School of Management

Design Research Center
Denmark's Design School

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