Commentary: Ecologies of acting and enacting

This volume is rich with accounts of human performance, expertise, techniques to support learning, methods of practice and rehearsal, and the associated agonies and ecstasies of adults striving to break habits, acquire and refine new habits, and excel in high stakes physical environments. Each account demonstrates the interconnection of action and thought. In scientific theories of human cognition, action and thought have been termed, respectively, procedural knowledge (knowing how and often seen as unavailable to conscious awareness) and declarative knowledge (knowing what, able to be declared, thus available to conscious awareness). In this commentary, I discuss the interplay of procedural and declarative knowledge in skill acquisition and deployment – knowledge in doing. I also touch on the dynamics of control in skill ecosystems and egalitarianism associated with a blurring of performer and audience.