Why don't we do what we know?

Twice this week, I had two separate conversations with colleagues who clearly described a list of actions that would produce improved achievement in our schools. In both situations, after we had talked a while, they each looked at me and said, "We know what to do, why don't we do it?"

After thinking about it a while, here is my preliminary answer is that we need courage, alignment, persistence. Courage to admit when we are not actually implementing the good ideas. One of my friends said, "Knowing about an idea and starting it passes as good work." We need courage to complete the implementation and followthrough. We need alignment between best practices and what teachers are actually doing every day. Great if we know what research says, but we have to design materials and systems so that they seamlessly incorporate those features rather than placing the burden upon the teacher to make the match. Finally, we need persistence to see good ideas through. Too often, the teacher changes, the principal moves, the fill-in-the-blank and we give up on the idea.

How do we close the knowing doing gap?