The Tacit Knowledge of Productive Scholars in Education.

This study investigates the tacit knowledge of prolific educational scholars. These scholars were motivated by a clear set of values that led them to make research a priority in the midst of competing demands and to persist through the more tedious or arduous parts of the research process. The participants learned to manage not only their time but also their emotions when coping with the pressures of academic life, the criticism inherent in the peer review process, and the politics of organizational life. They formed collaborative networks for both emotional support and intellectual challenge. By making these knowledge structures more explicit, others may benefit from the thinking behind these scholars’ success to improve scholarship in the field. The quality and usefulness of research in education is under increased public scrutiny and critique, with the emphasis in the No Child Left Behind legislation on scientifically based research and the restructuring within the U.S. Department of Education to create the Institute of Education Sciences. These critiques are not new (e.g., Bridges, 1982; Erickson, 1979; Griffiths, 1959), yet they have taken on added urgency as the stakes have been raised in terms of both credibility and funding for research. One reason education scholars have struggled to gain respect is that they must cope with what Labaree (1998) called a ‘‘lesser form of knowledge’’ as a soft, applied field. Labaree contrasts education with other fields, such as the natural sciences, where research findings are verifiable, definitive, and cumulative. In education, as in other soft fields, it is difficult to build consensus on important problems, to concentrate research efforts, or to accumulate knowledge. The difficulty arises in part because findings are always subject to critique by others who hold different interpretive frameworks. Yet, as an applied field, there is pressure to provide practical solutions to pressing problems.