Learning on The Job: School Principal's Tacit Knowledge for Leadership.

The article focuses on exploring tacit leadership knowledge—defined as implicit, experience-based cognitive strategies learned on the job—among elementary school principals and how this knowledge can be shared to improve educational leadership. Through interviews with sixteen principals, the study identified sixty-seven examples of tacit leadership knowledge, coded in an IF-THEN-BECAUSE format, and organized into five thematic clusters: promoting schoolwide practices, diminishing conflict and building trust, employing student data to improve outcomes, setting expectations that all children can learn, and adopting promising practices. The research highlights challenges in articulating and sharing tacit knowledge due to its implicit and contextual nature but suggests that structured representation and peer discussion can facilitate professional development and sustained educational change. Limitations include a small, cross-sectional sample and lack of direct linkage between tacit knowledge and student outcomes, indicating a need for further longitudinal research.