ABSTRACT
This chapter takes the author's from the philosophical and sociological works of Heidegger and Wacquant to apprenticeship and situated learning and then to nonlinear pedagogy. Applied to physical education, all of these perspectives start from the premise that the objects of practical knowledge are embodied and to some extent beyond the discursive realm. The notion of the tacit dimension was developed by Michael Polanyi, a Hungarian scientist and polymath who became a professor of social sciences at Manchester after fleeing the Nazis. Explicit knowledge is knowledge that to some extent can be transferred through the use of strings under circumstances that enable communication. Medium or somatic tacit knowledge is the kind of knowledge that Polanyi refers to when he discusses bicycling. A pedagogical model must also say something about subject matter, with the understanding that any specifications should be flexible enough to allow for local adaptations.
