The background of this Research is based on the higher level of expectations being placed upon mid-career teachers observed throughout certain regions of Japan where a large number of experienced teachers are now about to retire. For this reason, mid-career teachers, despite their low number, are now required to take charge of school research and also provide support to young teachers to a greater extent. This Research hence highlights and analyzes the prospect of introducing teacher-to-teacher mentoring, which is one of the directions and ideas designed for the development of a teachers’ capacity, and to identify how training programs for mid-career teachers can be conducted effectively. The first step was to create a number of model charts in order to better enable mid-career teachers to mentor junior teachers in an effective manner based on the prospective mentoring themes and directions. In the course of this initial procedure, I referred to the results of overseas research projects that examine training programs designed to improve teachers’ mentoring performance. For the second procedure, I utilized these model charts to inspect the actual outcomes of mentoring programs performed at Japanese schools conducted by Mid-level leaders at those schools. By doing this, I attempted to propose the specific mentoring performance that is required to be demonstrated by Mid-level leaders and that is also appropriate to various practices seen at Japanese schools. Lastly, I improved the model charts by taking into account the outcomes of the previous two procedures in order to establish tentative plans for effective training programs that enable Mid-level leaders to improve their mentoring performance (this has been carried out for the purpose of designing the themes and teaching approaches of potential coursework to enable such a course to be run at the School of Professional Development in Education, Nara University of Education and other educational institutions).

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