Status problem and expectations of competence

Based on an ethnographic research on Complex Instruction (CI), the contribution discusses how a group of Italian primary school teachers cope with the status problem and the issue of assigning competence to low-status students, by changing their expectations of competence and their usual way of teaching and evaluating. This chapter examine to what extent these teachers meet the original goal of achieving greater equity in multicultural classrooms and how being involved in CI means in terms of their professional development.