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Stanford's Graduate School of Education Website
*provides information on what complex instruction looks like, resources, videos, blogs, and other useful info. to help understand this teaching model

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Complex instruction is a pedagogical approach that enables students to learn and teachers to teach at a high intellectual level in academically, linguistically, racially, ethnically, and socially heterogeneous classrooms.

Over the past four decades, the community of teachers and researchers using complex instruction has expanded nationally and internationally. Click here to connect with our complex instruction community.

About

Complex instruction has been implemented and studied in primary, secondary, and post-secondary education, and in disciplines as diverse as English, Math, Science, Social Studies, and Physical Education. Explore our collection of resources, as well as links to other organizations with their own resource libraries.

Resources

Over the years, several videos have been created to explore the development and use of complex instruction. Click here for videos and classroom film clips that could be of use in professional development for yourself or others.

Videos

The research which led to the development of complex instruction began in the late 1960s as part of a wider effort to support school desegregation in the United States. Since then, a multitude of research reports, theses and dissertations, book chapters, and peer-reviewed journal articles have expanded our understanding of complex instruction. Explore our ever-growing library of related research, case studies, narratives, etc.

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Skip to content Skip to navigation Complex instruction is a pedagogical approach that enables students to learn and teachers to teach at a high intellectual level in academically, linguistically, racially, ethnically, and socially heterogeneous classrooms. Over the past four decades, the community of teachers and researchers using complex instruction has expanded nationally and internationally.

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This is a site provided on our CT806 Canvas page for Complex Instruction. May be worth exploring more.

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Achieving Equity in the Classroom

Complex Instruction evolved from over 20 years of research by Elizabeth Cohen, Rachel Lotan, and their colleagues at the Stanford School of Education. The goal of this instruction is to provide academic access and success for all students in heterogeneous classrooms.

Complex Instruction (CI) has three major components:

1) Multiple ability curricula are designed to foster the development of higher-order thinking skills through groupwork activities organized around a central concept or big idea. The tasks are open-ended, requiring students to work interdependently to solve problems. Most importantly, the tasks require a wide array of intellectual abilities so that students from diverse backgrounds and different levels of academic proficiency can make meaningful contributions to the group task. Research has documented significant achievement gains in classrooms using such curricula.

2) Using special instructional strategies, the teacher trains the students to use cooperative norms and specific roles to manage their own groups. The teacher is free to observe groups carefully, to provide specific feedback, and to treat status problems which cause unequal participation among group members.

3) To ensure equal access to learning, teachers learn to recognize and treat status problems. Sociological research demonstrates that in CI, the more that students talk and work together, the more they learn. However, students who are social isolates or students who are seen as lacking academic skills often fail to participate and thus learn less than they would if they were more active in the groups. In CI, teachers use status treatments to broaden students' perceptions of what it means to be smart, and to convince students that they each have important intellectual contributions to make to the multiple-ability task.

Many teachers in classrooms across the U.S., in Europe, and in Israel use complex instruction. Professors at the California State University system work collaboratively with the program bringing CI to pre-service teachers. Working for Equity in Heterogeneous Classrooms: Sociological Theory in Action (Teachers College Press, 1997), edited by Cohen & Lotan, is a definitive review of the research base of the program. At the present time, program staff are investigating ways to scale up the program while maintaining its effectiveness.

Reflections on CI
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Complex Instruction evolved from over 20 years of research by Elizabeth Cohen, Rachel Lotan, and their colleagues at the Stanford School of Education. The goal of this instruction is to provide academic access and success for all students in heterogeneous classrooms. Complex Instruction (CI) has three major components: 1) Multiple ability curricula are designed to foster the development of higher-order thinking skills through groupwork activities organized around a central concept or big idea.

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This site provides info. about what complex instruction is and looks like

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This site has a couple of sample CI Math lesson plans that can be used as a reference.

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Complex Instruction (CI) is an instructional strategy and pedagogical philosophy that supports all learners in engaging in challenging content. It attends to status, or ways in which people sort each other based on perceptions of competence. For example, students will often make assumptions about who is smart on math based on individual attributes that have nothing to do with mathematical competence. Students who quickly raise their hands, are good readers, have cool clothes, talk a lot, or talk with the "right" accent may be seen as better at math than other students.

Teachers using CI support all students in finding their own mathematical competence, in supporting the learning of other students, and in finding areas to develop their own skills. As students begin to notice the variety of skills involved in mathematics, they expand their own mathematical skills while also enhancing the learning of all students in the room.

CI was originally developed by Elizabeth Cohen and Rachel Lotan.

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Complex Instruction (CI) is an instructional strategy and pedagogical philosophy that supports all learners in engaging in challenging content. It attends to status, or ways in which people sort each other based on perceptions of competence. For example, students will often make assumptions about who is smart on math based on individual attributes that have nothing to do with mathematical competence.

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*excellent resource on ways that YouCubed is changing the way math is taught
*3 min. video on what complex instruction

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This is a super basic file through UA that lists some options for student roles

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Gives many great questions that need to be considered in using Complex Instruction.