Complex Instruction Program
Through the Complex Instruction Professional Development Program:
- Teachers learn to engage all students in rigorous mathematics learning.
- Teachers question and rethink their beliefs about what it means to do and learn mathematics, who can be successful learning mathematics, and how all students are mathematically smart.
- Teachers develop and use practical tools to create authentic and rigorous mathematical learning opportunities for every student by recognizing and mitigating hierarchical status roles in the classroom.
- Teachers enact the CCSS Mathematical Practices in classroom communities and integrate them as powerful ways of doing math and being mathematically smart.
- Equity-centered professional learning communities will support teachers to engage every student in rigorous mathematics learning.
- Self-sustaining mathematics departments support teachers on a daily basis.
- Cross-site collaboration between sites provide teachers with additional resources and perspectives.
- Leadership capacity to support sustained equity-oriented mathematics teaching will grow across the district.
- All students, and especially those from traditionally marginalized groups (AA, Latino, ELs, and Spec. Ed) will learn and achieve more in mathematics.
Program Designers and Organizers
We are thankful to our program designers, who started our community in 2009–2010:
Evra Baldinger, UC Berkeley
Lisa Jilk, University of Washington
Karen O'Connell, University of Washington
Ho Nguyen, SFUSD
These folks also supported us in our development of professional development and coaching:
Kristina Dance, Stanford University
Carlos Cabana, OUSD
Estelle Woodbury, Stanford University
Our current SFUSD CI coaching and planning team:
Angela Torres, Ho Nguyen, Elizabeth DeCarli, Glenn Kenyon, Noam Szoke, Sarah Gleason, Vriana Kempster, and Yuka Walton.
We are thankful to our program designers, who started our community in 2009–2010:
Evra Baldinger, UC Berkeley
Lisa Jilk, University of Washington
Karen O'Connell, University of Washington
Ho Nguyen, SFUSD
These folks also supported us in our development of professional development and coaching:
Kristina Dance, Stanford University
Carlos Cabana, OUSD
Estelle Woodbury, Stanford University
Our current SFUSD CI coaching and planning team:
Angela Torres, Ho Nguyen, Elizabeth DeCarli, Glenn Kenyon, Noam Szoke, Sarah Gleason, Vriana Kempster, and Yuka Walton.
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SF Complex Instruction Program Components
Research has shown that professional development focused on reforming individual teachers is not very effective when the goals for change require a cultural shift in both beliefs and practices. However, learning communities, especially subject-matter departments, have been shown to have a profound impact on student and teacher learning alike (McLaughlin & Talbert, 2001). In these communities, participants find reinforcement for their beliefs and collectively generate teaching practice. Our model for professional development has been modeled after the work done by Dr. Lisa Jilk at the University of Washington (see Jilk & O’Connell, in press). We have built upon that model to fit the context of our district. This model includes learning activities that support teacher teams (mathematics departments, course teams) as well as individuals. Activities vary in structure, but they are connected by common objectives, language, and practices that intellectually feed teachers and teacher communities. None of these activities stands alone; they are all mutually reinforcing, necessary components in the difficult work of “reculturing” mathematics teaching. Each component contributes to an interconnected web of support to move teachers away from hierarchical and exclusive ideas about mathematics ability and norms of teacher isolation, toward the collaboration and inclusion that create access to rich mathematics learning for all students. 
Teachers doing math together during a CI Collaboration Day
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Groupwork course and follow-up PD. The groupwork course takes place over one week in the summer (a total of 30 hours). During the school year, there are two follow up workshops (6 hours each). Together, these sessions introduce teachers to the theory and practices of CI. Session instructors model a CI classroom; teachers work on multi-ability mathematics tasks and experience being part of a learning community where everyone’s strengths are valued and where learners must depend on each other in order to succeed. Instructors make explicit both the norms that they value and the ways in which they make these norms a reality, creating an inclusive and accountable classroom culture with practices such as multi-ability launches, groupworthy tasks, group roles, and assignments of competence. To date, we have had cohorts of teachers join us each year since 2009. An additional cohorts will allow us to train teachers who are part of departments where there is a strong commitment to CI, so that these teachers can better understand and contribute to their departments’ work and, of course, to their students’ learning.
In-class coaching. The CI approach recognizes that teachers need ongoing support to translate what they learn in professional development sessions to their own classrooms. In-class coaching is one of the mechanisms through which we provide this support. The coach-teacher relationship in CI is not about an expert coach handing a novice teacher a “bag of tricks”; rather, it is a learning partnership that helps teachers identify their strengths and set a coherent agenda through which to improve their practice over time. A coaching session begins with a pre-lesson conversation in which the teacher describes her goals for the lesson and what she would like the coach to pay attention to. The coach then participates in the lesson, sometimes observing and sometimes offering spur-of-the-moment ideas or modeling particular practices with students. After the lesson, the coach and teacher debrief, sharing questions and strategizing around strengths upon which the teacher can build. With teachers who are new to CI, we aim for six sessions over the course of the year. Other, more sustainable mechanisms (see below) provide similar support to more experienced CI teachers.
Site-based collaboration coaching. As we have mentioned above, CI is not only about individual teachers; it is also about their communities. We therefore provide coaching support for site-based teams. The kind of support that is needed varies from site to site. In some departments, a culture of collaboration exists and coaches provide support in making the most of collaboration time by building norms for teachers thinking together about teaching, learning, and students. In other departments, coaches help to establish structures and norms to build a culture of collaboration. We have a number of departments that are just beginning to develop promising collaborative cultures, and we plan to prioritize supporting their development to become self-sustaining communities of learners.
Peer observation. Teachers observing in each other’s classrooms supports the activities mentioned above in multiple ways. First, it gives teachers additional opportunities to see CI practices in action, and additional models for assessing student understanding in the moment, assigning competence to a low-status student, and any number of other pedagogical moves. It also gives teachers shared experiences that they can bring to their collaboration time, so that they can analyze teacher moves and student responses from multiple perspectives. These perspectives can then deepen discussions about subsequent instruction, making it more responsive to student needs and strengths. As discussed later in this report, a number of our departments have begun some sort of peer collaboration. We intend to support and build on these promising beginnings and see that this will be an essential piece of long-term sustainability.
Teacher facilitator support. Strong, distributed leadership is a necessary component for the sustainability of strong CI communities and strong CI teaching. We therefore provide extra support to teachers from each site who have been designated as teacher facilitators. We provide monthly leadership training to support these teacher facilitators in helping their departments work toward a common vision for teaching and learning, grow their collaborative communities, consider ways to seek out structural and administrative support for their departments’ work and distribute leadership among their colleagues.
Cross-site collaboration. In addition to supporting within-site collaboration, we are working to develop and strengthen a cross-site community that previously did not exist. We do this with our CI Collaboration Days, monthly Teacher Facilitator meetings, and Video Club. With our four district-wide CI Collaboration Days, teachers plan for the upcoming semester often in site teams but also cross-sites. These days build our district community while simultaneously provides a spring-board for continued site-based collaboration. Monthly Teacher Facilitator meetings bring teachers from across the district together to share and collectively solve problems. Video Club gives us an opportunity to develop a common vision of how a CI classrooms looks and sounds like through analysis of clips of student interaction from one of our teachers’ classrooms.
Collaboration with site and district administration. Site administrative support is critical for any CI to be effective and for learning communities to develop and be sustained. Principals can validate teachers work by reinforcing these expansive ways of doing and learning mathematics (which includes the Math Practices), allow teachers to take risk as they learn to have student-centered classrooms, provide structures such as common planning time for teachers to plan and support each other, give departments input for hiring towards this expansive vision for teaching and learning, and provide encouragement.
In-class coaching. The CI approach recognizes that teachers need ongoing support to translate what they learn in professional development sessions to their own classrooms. In-class coaching is one of the mechanisms through which we provide this support. The coach-teacher relationship in CI is not about an expert coach handing a novice teacher a “bag of tricks”; rather, it is a learning partnership that helps teachers identify their strengths and set a coherent agenda through which to improve their practice over time. A coaching session begins with a pre-lesson conversation in which the teacher describes her goals for the lesson and what she would like the coach to pay attention to. The coach then participates in the lesson, sometimes observing and sometimes offering spur-of-the-moment ideas or modeling particular practices with students. After the lesson, the coach and teacher debrief, sharing questions and strategizing around strengths upon which the teacher can build. With teachers who are new to CI, we aim for six sessions over the course of the year. Other, more sustainable mechanisms (see below) provide similar support to more experienced CI teachers.
Site-based collaboration coaching. As we have mentioned above, CI is not only about individual teachers; it is also about their communities. We therefore provide coaching support for site-based teams. The kind of support that is needed varies from site to site. In some departments, a culture of collaboration exists and coaches provide support in making the most of collaboration time by building norms for teachers thinking together about teaching, learning, and students. In other departments, coaches help to establish structures and norms to build a culture of collaboration. We have a number of departments that are just beginning to develop promising collaborative cultures, and we plan to prioritize supporting their development to become self-sustaining communities of learners.
Peer observation. Teachers observing in each other’s classrooms supports the activities mentioned above in multiple ways. First, it gives teachers additional opportunities to see CI practices in action, and additional models for assessing student understanding in the moment, assigning competence to a low-status student, and any number of other pedagogical moves. It also gives teachers shared experiences that they can bring to their collaboration time, so that they can analyze teacher moves and student responses from multiple perspectives. These perspectives can then deepen discussions about subsequent instruction, making it more responsive to student needs and strengths. As discussed later in this report, a number of our departments have begun some sort of peer collaboration. We intend to support and build on these promising beginnings and see that this will be an essential piece of long-term sustainability.
Teacher facilitator support. Strong, distributed leadership is a necessary component for the sustainability of strong CI communities and strong CI teaching. We therefore provide extra support to teachers from each site who have been designated as teacher facilitators. We provide monthly leadership training to support these teacher facilitators in helping their departments work toward a common vision for teaching and learning, grow their collaborative communities, consider ways to seek out structural and administrative support for their departments’ work and distribute leadership among their colleagues.
Cross-site collaboration. In addition to supporting within-site collaboration, we are working to develop and strengthen a cross-site community that previously did not exist. We do this with our CI Collaboration Days, monthly Teacher Facilitator meetings, and Video Club. With our four district-wide CI Collaboration Days, teachers plan for the upcoming semester often in site teams but also cross-sites. These days build our district community while simultaneously provides a spring-board for continued site-based collaboration. Monthly Teacher Facilitator meetings bring teachers from across the district together to share and collectively solve problems. Video Club gives us an opportunity to develop a common vision of how a CI classrooms looks and sounds like through analysis of clips of student interaction from one of our teachers’ classrooms.
Collaboration with site and district administration. Site administrative support is critical for any CI to be effective and for learning communities to develop and be sustained. Principals can validate teachers work by reinforcing these expansive ways of doing and learning mathematics (which includes the Math Practices), allow teachers to take risk as they learn to have student-centered classrooms, provide structures such as common planning time for teachers to plan and support each other, give departments input for hiring towards this expansive vision for teaching and learning, and provide encouragement.
