Dispersal of organisms plays an important role in maintaining biodiversity. In particular, random dispersal promotes species coexistence in spatially structured environments. However, dispersal can be directed by fitness-related cues. How this directed dispersal affects the coexistence of competing species remains unclear, especially for which improves fitness of individual (i.e. adaptive dispersal). We address this important question by constructing a two-patch metacommunity model of two consumers with two directed dispersal modes using local or global information of resource availability. We compared the competitive outcomes under different dispersal mode and interpreted the results in terms of adaptiveness of dispersal. We found that (i) directed dispersal can still be maladaptive and promote coexistence in the same way that random dispersal does. More importantly, (ii) when directed dispersal is adaptive, coexistence is possible if the inferior competitor can track the patch of higher resource level faster than its superior competitor. This is a new mechanism of dispersal-mediated coexistence. Our results strongly imply the importance of adaptive behavior in dispersal-mediated coexistence of competing species.