Complex Instruction - Notes

Complex instruction is a strategy that responds to the sorts of academic ranges that frequently exist in classrooms that are academically, culturally, and linguistically heterogeneous (Cohen, 1994; Watanabe, 2012). 

It's goal is to establish equity of learning opportunity for all students in the context of intellectually challenging materials and through the use of small instructional groups.

Complex instruction require considerable reflection and planning; but complex instruction helps establish a classroom in which the contributions of every individual are prized by all, and high-level instruction is standard fare for all learners. 

Complex instruction tasks:

• Require students to work together in small, heterogeneous groups
• Designed to draw upon the intellectual strengths of each student in the group
• Open-ended
• Intrinsically interesting to students
• Allow for a variety of solutions and solution routes
• Involve real objects
• Provide materials and instructions in multiple languages (if students in the class represent varied language groups)
• Integrate reading and writing in ways that make them an important means to accomplishing a desirable goal
• Draw upon multiple abilities in a real-world way
• Use multimedia 
• Require many different talents in order to be completed adequately 

An effective complex instruction task does not:

• Have a single right answer
• Allow for completion more efficiently by one or two students than by the whole group
• Reflect low-level thinking
• Involve simple memorization of routine learning