Creativity and Competencies in Experimenting with Complex Instruction: From the pupils' perspective

This article explores the implementation of Complex Instruction (CI) in multicultural Italian primary school classrooms in the city and province of Bologna. Based on ethnographic research carried out in 2007-2009, it presents a critical analysis of the complex process of learning in a cooperative way. The article will describe the different competencies and strategies pupils use to cope with CI. These have been divided into three categories: cooperative competencies, school competencies, and child competencies. Students did not use cooperative competencies just because they had learnt them, but they interwove these with their habitual way of learning and behaving at school (i.e. school competencies and child competencies), which could influence the process and the results of the CI experiments in class. Pupils engaged actively with the changes brought about by the implementation of the CI method, choosing and selecting different responses ranging from routine ones to creative ones. Finally, the article presents an analysis of the conditions under which low-status students had a voice.