Is K-12 Shifting Towards Tacit Knowledge?

A lot of conversations that I've been a part of recently have emphasised the need for "deep learning", "active learning", "authentic learning" or "learning in the real world", etc., and at heart it seems to me that all of these activities appear to place an emphasis on students doing something rather than memorizing something. The role of the teacher becomes one of coaching students how to do things better, how to become a critical thinker, or a keen observer and so on. To some degree these kinds of activities appear to fall under the category of "tacit knowledge", or a kind of knowledge by doing that is hard to capture and explain. Most physical activity falls under this category of knowledge. Tacit knowledge is often contrasted with explicit knowledge, defined as a knowledge of concrete things like facts or discrete concepts.

The odd thing about these conversations between educators is that there is never a reference to the distinction between these forms of knowledge. I know that my professional education was surprisingly mum on the difference, but it would stand to reason that particular teaching techniques would be more successful in dealing with particular types of knowledge. It is notoriously difficult trying to get eastablished teachers to change their practice and I can't help wondering whether being able to draw a link between teaching practices and the transfer of particular knowledge types might be helpful.