Tacit knowledge of school superintendents: Its nature, meaning, and content

This article maps the content and quantity of tacit knowledge of a sample o f Ohio public school superintendents. Tacit knowledge of the superintendent s was collected via interviews using a combination of critical incident and Sense-making methodologies to elicit examples of tacit knowledge acquired during their careers. The examples were culled and coded into antecedent an d consequent behaviors, and hierarchical cluster analysis was performed usi ng the 469 tacit knowledge items generated across the participants. A total of 21 categories describe the tacit knowledge of the entire superintendent group. Finally, differences in categories and amounts of tacit knowledge w ere found between "reputationally successful" and "typical" superintendents .