Procedural knowledge (also known as knowing-how, and sometimes referred to as practical knowledge, imperative knowledge, or performative knowledge) is the knowledge exercised in the performance of some task. Unlike descriptive knowledge (also known as declarative knowledge, propositional knowledge or "knowing-that"), which involves knowledge of specific facts or propositions (e.g. "I know that snow is white"), procedural knowledge involves one's ability to do something (e.g. "I know how to change a flat tire"). A person doesn't need to be able to verbally articulate their procedural knowledge in order for it to count as knowledge, since procedural knowledge requires only knowing how to correctly perform an action or exercise a skill.
The term procedural knowledge has narrower but related technical uses in both cognitive psychology and intellectual property law.
Overview
Procedural knowledge (i.e., knowledge-how) is different from descriptive knowledge (i.e., knowledge-that) in that it can be directly applied to a task. For instance, the procedural knowledge one uses to solve problems differs from the declarative knowledge one possesses about problem solving because this knowledge is formed by doing.
The distinction between knowing-how and knowing-that was brought to prominence in epistemology by Gilbert Ryle who used it in his book The Concept of Mind.
Know-how is also often referred to as street smarts (sometimes conceived as the opposite of book smarts), and a person employing their street smarts as street wise. Know-how is often tacit knowledge, which means that it can be difficult to transfer to another person by means of writing it down or verbalising it. The opposite of tacit knowledge is explicit knowledge.
Definition
Procedural knowledge is the "know how" attributed to technology defined by cognitive psychologists, which is simply "know how to do it" knowledge. Part of the complexity of it comes in trying to link it to terms such as process, problem solving, strategic thinking and the like, which in turn requires distinguishing different levels of procedure. It is the ability to execute action sequences to solve problems. This type of knowledge is tied to specific problem types and therefore is not widely generalizable. Procedural knowledge is goal-oriented and mediates problem-solving behavior.
The concept of procedural knowledge is also widely used in mathematics educational researches. The well-influential definition of procedural knowledge in this domain comes from the introductory chapter by Hiebert and Lefevre (1986) of the seminal book "Conceptual and procedural knowledge: The case of mathematics", in which they divided procedural knowledge into two categories. The first one is a familiarity with the individual symbols of the system and with the syntactic conventions for acceptable configurations of symbols. The second one consists of rules or procedures of solving mathematical problems. In other words, they define procedural knowledge as knowledge of the syntax, steps conventions and rules for manipulating symbols. Many of the procedures that students possess probably are chains of prescriptions for manipulating symbols. In their definition, procedural knowledge includes algorithms, which means if one executes the procedural steps in a predetermined order and without errors, one is guaranteed to get the solutions, but not includes heuristics, which are abstract, sophisticated and deep procedures knowledge that are tremendously powerful assets in problem solving. Therefore, Star (2005) proposed a reconceptualization of procedural knowledge, suggesting that it can be either superficial, like ones mentioned in Hiebert and Lefevre (1986), or deep. Deep procedural knowledge is associated with comprehension, flexibility and critical judgement. For example, the goals and subgoals of steps, the environment or type of situation for certain procedure, and the constraints imposed upon the procedure by the environment. Research on procedural flexibility development indicates flexibility as an indicator for deep procedural knowledge. Individuals with superficial procedural knowledge can only use standard technique, which might lead to low efficiency solutions and probably inability to solve novel questions. However, more flexible solvers, with a deep procedural knowledge, can navigate their way through domain, using techniques other than ones that are over-practiced, and find the best match solutions for different conditions and goals.