Working on Cooperative Learning: challenges in implementing a new strategy

The development of teaching professional competencies is necessary if teachers are to cope with heterogeneous students. From an educational comparative perspective, the article explores the complex process of implementation of a new teaching method for multicultural classrooms, such as Complex Instruction. It investigates the implications of an educational innovation for a group of teachers, and to what extent the latter are able to change their educational ideas and practices. An ethnographic research approach is adopted in order to shed light upon some of the challenges these teachers encountered and how these affected their choices. Thus the process of educational change is presented as an open problem in which the ‘culture of the school’ does not play a neutral role.