There are many different definitions floating around of who constitutes "tactile learning" and many are way off. Some contend that tactile and kinesthetic are the same thing. They are not.
Kinesthetic refers to learning through movement. Period. It could be any part of your body, any muscle group from walking around a city to stirring a pot. Kinesthetic learning includes the whole spectrum of gross motor to fine motor movements.
Tactile learning is fundamentally different. It's not about movement per se. Tactile learning refers to learning by what you literally feel and sense from what you are touching and what is touching you, which includes not only physical objects like a leaf falling on your hand but sensations like hard/soft, hot/cold, textures like smooth/rough, wet/dry, all the vast range of sensations like rubbery, spongy, squishy, metallic, fuzzy, prickly, soggy, pliable, etc. In sports, it includes:
-the feel of the basketball/baseball/football in your hand that helps tell you when your grip is right
-the feel of the glove or the bat handle in baseball
-the feel of the defender on your back as you try to get position in the post in basketball
-the feel of the sand under your feet in beach volleyball or soccer
-the feeling of the "contact" in football which I always loved--maybe the best feeling I had in any sport I played. Except the feeling of getting concussions from helmet to helmet collisions, too many of which made me stop playing.
Key point: tactile intelligence does not require movement or skill in moving, which is what kinesthetic learning is about. It does require some kind of touching and contact. For example, you could stand without moving in the rain or the sunshine and use tactile intelligence to evaluate those elements as they hit your skin and eyes. An elephant could brush its trunk up against your arm without you doing anything, and tactile intelligence would still help you learn about the feel of elephant skin even though you didn't move.
I think tactile learning is often confused with kinesthetic learning--including both gross and fine motor movements--because they both involve the physical world and frequently occur at the same time. But they are distinct and separate. For example, if you move your arm to rub it against an elephant, the movement of your arm is kinesthetic but the sensation of the elephant's skin--texture--is tactile.
Tactile intelligence is often confused with fine motor skills. They are different. Fine motor skills means using small muscles to make small exact movements. For example, you could stick your hand into a bag full of junk and rummage around with no particularly high level of fine motor skill trying to find your keys. The movement of fingers/hand/wrist itself its fine motor, but the feeling/sensing of the keys when you hit them requires tactile awareness.
Or take the opposite, a fine motor activity that doesn't require high tactile. For example, someone who builds small model airplanes made of plastic. This requires working with small parts, fine. However, the fine motor is a movement, but feeling the parts like the texture and sensation of plastic etc. is different. To make it clear, imagine a robot that could mimick fine motor movements using robot fingers to put together model airplanes. But it would be an entirely different challenge for the robot to mimick tactile intelligence i.e. feel the parts, being able to say whether the parts are sticky, squishy, hot, dry, rough, etc. is a whole other realm.
From this explanation you might start to think that tactile is a totally passive intelligence, something that just "happens" to you. Totally the opposite. Tactile intelligence is just that, an intelligence, something we can actively use to learn. For example, a dermatologist may feel your skin to help diagnose what the problem is. You feel a child's forehead to see if they have a fever. Tactile intelligence is very important for human survival. For example, when you pick fruit, knowing how hard or soft it should be feel is key to finding the best fruit available.
I used to work for an in-school field trip company going around different elementary schools all over the DC area with big plastic bins full of science stuff for kids. It was totally tactile, which suits those ages because elementary kids are at a kinesthetic and tactile stage of learning. For example, one of the programs had beaver pelts, coyote skulls, shark's teeth, and all kinds of other animal and insect objects kids could feel and use their tactile sense with to understand better.
Chefs use tactile sense big time. Making food is not just about taste, it's also about "feel" or texture, etc. For example, "crunchy" or "smooth" peanut butter is not a taste, it's a feel. Chefs are very careful to try to keep a pork chop from turning out like cardboard or making rubbery scallops. Sauces have to have a certain consistency. All this is not about taste or smell per se, it is about tactile sensations.
Clothing design also involves a lot of tactile intelligence. How a wool sweater feels is very important, part of the reason people buy it. Or smooth parachute pants (remember those?). How the insole of a shoe feels or how the material of a coat lining feels is crucial to whether somebody buys it.
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