In teacher education, one of the serious problems is that in their teaching most teachers cannot act based on what they know. At times, they cannot do their teaching behaviors, even though they are considered important for student learning. This problem is same for mentoring program. It is nonsense for schoolteachers to know about teaching, classroom management, and student guidance, and so on in more detail without doing.

   On the subject of such matter, in management studies, the knowing-doing gap was found out in many companies. Knowing what to do is not enough, and leaders should act on their knowledge. Some factors, for example, fear, prevent acting on knowledge (Pfeffer, J. et al., 1999). This appears to mean that schoolteachers should learn practical knowledge as ‘knowing how’, not ‘knowing that’ (G. Ryle, 1949). Particularly, beginning/novice teachers seem to need psychosocial support from their mentor or colleagues as Asada et al. (2012, 2014) found out that Japanese beginning teachers were dependent on their mentors both mentally and in their career.

   Furthermore, another idea by Pfeffer and Sutton(2006) pointed out the leader’s half-truth is dangerous for company management. This means that most leaders/middle leaders hold by their own pet theory, cannot accept the actual situation, and tend to act in their own used way. So they cannot recognize hard facts happened in their company. Like leaders, most schoolteachers have their own personal theory of teaching based on their own teaching experience, so the knowing-doing gap in their teaching seems to be found out in their class.

   As to the teacher’s personal theory, the teacher’s thought process appears to be influenced by their beliefs about teaching (Clark,C.M. et al., 1986). Kawamura and Kokubu (1996) identified the irrational belief of the Japanese elementary school teachers. They pointed out that most schoolteachers could not always appropriately deal with problems in their class because they were bound by their irrational belief. For example, as some teachers have their belief, “a teacher must make his/her students discipline by his/her command”, they tend to use an imperative tone in teaching without hard facts happened in class. The irrational belief is thought to be a half-truth, which means teaching behavior based on this belief happen to work terrific in teaching, so the teacher came to believe it as the successful teaching behavior.

   As pointed out previously, one of the big problems is how to bridge the gap between knowing and doing in teaching in teacher education/mentoring although it is needless to say that teacher’s personal theory play the important role to teach in the classroom effectively and successfully. The research questions of this study are

1)    What is the gap between knowing and doing in elementary school teaching?

2)    How does the knowing-doing gap in teaching relate to elementary school teacher’s belief?

3)    Do the teacher’s traits (teaching experience, sex) relate with the knowing-doing gap in teaching?

Pfeffer,J., Sutton,R.I.(1999) The Knowing-Doing Gap: How Smart Companies Turn Knowledge into Action. Harvard Business School Press. Ryle,G.(1949) The Concept of Mind. Hatchinson. Pfeffer,J., Sutton,R.I.(2006) Hard Facts, Dangerous Half-Truths, and Total Nonsense: Profitting from Evidence-Based Management. Harvard Business School Press. Asada,T., Imamura,K. (2012) How do Mentees Evaluate Their Mentor’s Competencies in Japanese induction program? Paper presented at ECER2012 at Cadiz, Spain. Asada,T., Imamura,K. (2014) What do mentors learn through mentoring in Japanese induction program? Paper presented at ECER2014 at Porto. Clark,C.M., Peterson,P.L.(1986) Teachers’ thought processs in Wittrock,M.C.(ed.) Handbook of Research on Teaching 3rd ed. Macmillan.