How Complex Instruction led to High and Equitable Achievement:
The Case of Railside School.
Jo Boaler, The University of Sussex.
Introduction.

This short paper will introduce you to the work of a group of equity-oriented teachers in an innercity school in California, who brought about amazing achievements in mathematics. The teachers
used an approach called ‘complex instruction’, which is not well known in the UK, to bring abouthigh achievements and great enjoyment of maths among students. I worked with a team of doctoral
students to research the impact of the school’s approach and we compared the students’ learning
experiences to students in other schools who worked differently. In this paper I will describe how
the teachers worked and the results they achieved, in a related paper on this website (called‘Complex Instruction in England – the journey, the new schools, and initial results’.) I will describe mytrip to Downing Street to show the approach to government ministers, which resulted in schools in
England bravely taking on the innovative and unusual approach.
One of the most difficult challenges faced by teachers of maths is the wide range of students theyteach. Even when taught in sets, maths classes often include students with low motivation and weakknowledge alongside others with advanced understanding and high motivation. Not surprisingly
many teachers are supporters of ability grouping as it seems too hard to teach very mixed groups. In
two different research studies I have conducted, in England and the US, I have followed students
through secondary schools that teach and group students differently, investigating the impact of thedifferent teaching and grouping methods upon achievement and enjoyment. In both studies theschools that used mixed ability approaches resulted in extremely impressive outcomes, including
higher overall attainment and more equitable outcomes (Boaler, 2009). But in both cases the maths
departments that achieved such goals used particular methods to make the mixed ability teachingeffective. In this short paper I will describe the approach of “Railside school”.

1Railside School.
Railside High School is an inner-city school in California and lessons are frequently interrupted by
the sound of trains passing right next to the playground. As with many inner-city schools thebuildings look as though they are in need of some repair, but Railside is not like other inner-city
schools. When I have taken visitors to the school and we have stepped inside the maths classrooms,
they have been amazed to see all the students hard at work, engaged and excited about maths andadvanced level classes filled to capacity. I first visited Railside a few years ago, when I was aprofessor at Stanford University, because I had learned that the teachers collaborated and planned
teaching ideas together and I was interested to see their lessons. I saw enough in that visit to invite
the school to be part of a longitudinal research project investigating the effectiveness of different
mathematics approaches. Some four years later, after we had followed 700 students through threehigh schools, observing, interviewing and assessing students, we knew that Railside’s approach wasboth highly unusual and highly successful.
The mathematics teachers at Railside originally taught using traditional methods, but the teachers
were unhappy with the high failure rates among students and the students’ lack of interest in maths
The teachers decided to engage students in more group work and to follow a pedagogical approach
designed to make group work equal, because they knew that group work often fails when students
work unequally. They changed their classes from those taught in sets, to those taught in mixed
ability groups and they designed a new curriculum together, that was based on what they called“group-worthy tasks”. They moved from questions and exercises that gave students practice onmathematical methods such as ‘factoring polynomials’, or ‘solving inequalities’, and designed theircurriculum around bigger mathematical ideas, with unifying themes such as “What is a linear
function?” They also introduced an important theme of ‘multiple representations’ – this meant thatthey always asked students to communicate mathematical ideas in two or more ways, such as
through words, diagrams, tables, symbols, objects, and graphs. They also asked students to discuss
the different representations with each other and to move between the different representations,for example colour coding their diagrams and graphs to show where the same information wascommunicated (an example of one of their group-worthy, multiple representation tasks is given in
the accompanying paper: ‘An example of a group-worthy task in Railside school’.). When weinterviewed students and asked them what they thought maths was, they did not tell us that it was aset of rules, as most students do, instead they told us that maths was a form of communication, or alanguage, as one student explained: “Math is like kind of a language, because it has got a whole2

bunch of different meanings to it, and I think it is communicating. When you know the solution to a
problem, I mean that is kind of like communicating with your friends.”
I was studying the learning of the Railside students as part of a larger, four-year study of three
American high schools, during which we followed 700 students who were taught differently. The
students at Railside worked on group tasks, in mixed ability classes, whereas the other students
learned traditionally – practicing methods that a teacher demonstrated, through individual work.
During the four-year study we collected a range of data, including approximately 600 hours ofclassroom observations, assessments given to the students each year, questionnaires andinterviews. Railside school was more diverse than the other two schools, with more English
language learners and higher levels of cultural diversity (approximately 38% of students wereLatino/a, 23% African American, 20% White, 16% Asian or Pacific Islanders and 3% from othergroups). We tested all of the students at the beginning of high school, before they had started
working in different ways. At that time the Railside students were achieving at significantly lower
levels than students at the other two schools, which is not atypical for students attending inner city
schools, but within two years they were achieving at significantly higher levels. The following
graphs show the achievement of students at the beginning of the study (year 1 pre-assessment) andat the end of year 1 (equivalent to Y9 in the UK) and the end of year 2 (equivalent to Y10):
Year 1 Pre-Assessment.

50
40
30
20
10
0

Traditional

Railside

n=658, t = -9.141, p <0.001

3End of Year 1

50
40
30
20
10
0

Traditional

Railside

n=637, t = -2.040, p <0.04
End of Year 2

50
40
30
20
10
0

Traditional

Railside

n=5128, t = -8.309, p <0.001
At the end of year 2 (similar to Y10 in the UK) the average achievement of the students taught
traditionally was equivalent to a GCSE grade D, at Railside the average achievement was equivalent
to a GCSE grade C. In other words, the Railside students learned in one year what it took thestudents taught traditionally to learn in more than two years. This result was achieved at Railsideeven though the students started the school at significantly lower levels, with severe gaps in theirmathematical knowledge and understanding.

4

Students at Railside were also more positive about mathematics and took more courses. In year 4,
41% of seniors were enrolled in calculus, compared with approximately 27% in the other two
schools. The number of students taking advanced maths at Railside was incredibly high, for any
school but particularly for a diverse, inner-city school where students arrived with low levels ofmathematics knowledge. Importantly, inequities between students of different ethnic groups
disappeared or were reduced in all cases at Railside whereas they remained at the other schoolsthat employed ability grouping (for more detail see Boaler, 2009). Our statistical analysis showedthat the students who were most advantaged by the mixed ability Railside approach were the highachievers, as they improved more than all other students. The high achievers at Railside also
learned significantly more than the high achievers who went into top sets in the traditional schools.
Many people are concerned about mixed ability teaching as they worry about the high achieving
students who may be held back in mixed groups, but we found that the students were advantaged
because they spent time explaining work, which helped their own understanding, and they wereable to think more deeply about maths, rather than rushing through more and more work, as
typically happens in top set classrooms.
The Railside classrooms were all organized in groups and students helped each other as they
worked. The Railside teachers paid a lot of attention to the ways the groups worked together andthey taught students to respect the contributions of other students, regardless of their priorattainment or their status with other students. One unfortunate but common side effect of someclassroom approaches is that students develop beliefs about the inferiority or superiority ofdifferent students. In the other classes we studied, that were taught traditionally, students talked
about other students as smart and dumb, quick and slow. At Railside the students did not talk inthese ways. This did not mean that they thought all students were the same, but they came toappreciate the diversity of the class and the various attributes that different students offered. As
Zane described to me: “Everybody in there is at a different level. But what makes the class good is thateverybody’s at different levels so everybody’s constantly teaching each other and helping each otherout.”
The teachers at Railside followed an approach called ‘complex instruction’(http://cgi.stanford.edu/group/pci/cgi-bin/site.cgi), which is a method designed to make group
work more effective and to promote equity in classrooms. They emphasized that all children were“smart” and had strengths in different areas and that everyone had something important to offer
when working on maths. There were many reasons for the success of the Railside students.
Importantly, the students were given opportunities to work on interesting problems that required

5them to think, and not just reproduce methods, and they were required to discuss mathematics witheach other, increasing their interest and enjoyment. But there was another important aspect of theschool’s approach that is much more rare – the teachers enacted an expanded conception ofmathematics and “smartness”. The teachers at Railside knew that being good at mathematics
involves many different ways of working, as mathematicians’ accounts tell us. It involves asking
questions, drawing pictures and graphs, rephrasing problems, justifying methods and representing
ideas, in addition to calculating with procedures. Instead of just rewarding the correct use ofprocedures the teachers encouraged and rewarded all of these different ways of being
mathematical.
In the remainder of this short paper, I will outline seven of the key methods that teachers used tobring about the incredible successes they achieved. I have already mentioned that the teachers used
an approach called ‘complex instruction’, designed by Liz Cohen and Rachel Lotan (Cohen, 1994;
Cohen & Lotan, 1997), to make group work equal. It is a pedagogical approach designed for use inany subject areas, and most schools use it in other subjects such as humanities. At Raiside the maths
department was the only department using the approach at the time of our research, although now
other departments have started to use the approach as the maths department had the best state test
results in the school.
Some maths departments employ group work with limited success, particularly because groups do
not always function well, with some students doing more of the work than others, and somestudents being excluded or choosing to opt out. Complex instruction (or CI) aims to counter social
and academic status differences in classrooms, starting from the premise that status differences do
not emerge because of particular students but because of group interactions. The approach includes
a number of recommended practices that the mathematics department employed and refined foruse in their subject area. In the next section I will review seven of the practices that the teachers
employed and that our long term observations, interviews with students, and detailed analyses,
showed to be important in the promotion of high achievement and equity. The first four
(multidimensional classrooms, student roles, assigning competence, and student responsibility) arerecommended in the complex instruction approach, the last three (high expectations, effort overability, and clear expectations) were consistent with the approach and they were important to thehigh and equitable results that were achieved.

6Complex Instruction.
(1) Multidimensionality
In many mathematics classrooms there is one practice that is valued above all others – that of
executing procedures correctly and quickly. The narrowness by which success is judged means thatsome students rise to the top of classes, gaining good marks and teacher praise, while others sink tothe bottom with most students knowing where they are in the hierarchy created. Such classrooms
are uni-dimensional – the dimensions along which success is presented are singular. A central partof the complex instruction approach is what the authors refer to as multiple ability treatment. The
idea is that when a more open set of task requirements is given, that values many different‘abilities,’ then students will be more engaged and more successful. At Railside the teachers createdmultidimensional classes by asking the question – how does a mathematician work? Of course it isimportant to execute procedures but this is only one aspect of mathematical work and amathematician also needs, for example, to ask good questions, connect methods, communicate ideas
in different representations, use logic and reasoning, explain well and so on. What was unusual
about Railside was that they did not only value all of these ways of being mathematical, but theyassessed students on them. This meant that a student who may not have been the fastest or best at
following and executing methods, could be very successful if they asked good questions, or saw
problems in different ways, explaining them well to others. In analysing the success of the Railside
approach, we concluded that many more students were successful, because there were many more
ways to be successful. And this success transferred to state tests even though the tests were very
narrow and did not assess the broad ways of working that students had learned, as the students hadlearned to feel good about themselves in maths classrooms and they had developed confidence intheir own work.
The teachers created multi-dimensional classes by using what they referred to as group-worthy
problems – open-ended problems that illustrated important mathematical concepts, allowed for
multiple representations, and had several possible solution paths (Horn, 2005). The teachers hadcreated the introductory algebra course themselves, adapting problems from different publishedcurriculum to make them group-worthy. This enabled more students to contribute ideas and feelvalued. When we interviewed the students from all three schools and asked them “What does it taketo be successful in math class?” a stunning 94% of students from the traditional classes said thesame thing - “you need to pay careful attention”. At Railside the students answered the samequestion with many different practices such as: asking good questions, rephrasing problems,

7explaining well, being logical, justifying work, considering answers, and using manipulatives. The
different dimensions that students believed to be an important part of mathematical work at
Railside were valued in the teachers’ interactions and the grading system.
The multidimensional nature of the classes at Railside was an extremely important part of theincreased success of students. Students were aware of the different practices that were valued andall of them felt successful because they are able to excel at some of them (in contrast to students inmany schools in England who believe that they are not good at maths). One of the messages that theteachers frequently gave was that “no-one is good at all of these ways of working, but everyone isgood at some of them”. The following comments given by students in interviews give an indicationof the multidimensionality of classes –Back in middle school the only thing you worked on was your math skills. But here you worksocially and you also try to learn to help people and get help. Like you improve on your social
skills, math skills and logic skills. (Janet, Y1)
With math you have to interact with everybody and talk to them and answer theirquestions. You can’t be just like “oh here’s the book, look at the numbers and figure it out”
Int: Why is that different for math?
It’s not just one way to do it (…) It’s more interpretive. It’s not just one answer. There’s morethan one way to get it. And then it’s like: “Why does it work”? (Jasmine, Y1)
It is rare to hear students describe mathematics as broader and more interpretive than othersubjects. This breadth was important to the wide rates of success and participation achieved.
(2) Roles
When students were placed into groups they were also given a particular role to play, such as
facilitator, team captain, recorder/reporter or resource manager (Cohen & Lotan, 1997). The idea
behind this approach is that all students have important work to do in groups, without which thegroup cannot function. At Railside the teachers emphasized the different roles at frequent intervals,
stopping, for example, at the start of class to remind facilitators to help people check their answers
or show their work or to ask the group “What did you get for number 1?” Teachers also used theroles to distribute authority in the room differently – when they wanted to give new information to
the class, for example, instead of talking to the whole class they would call the team captains out to8the front and tell them the information the other students needed; they would then return to theirgroups and share the new information. Students changed roles at the end of each unit of work. The
teachers reinforced the status of the different roles and the important part they played in themathematical work that was being undertaken. The roles contributed to the complex
interconnected system that operated in each classroom, a system in which everyone had somethingimportant to do and all students learned to rely upon each other.
(3) Assigning Competence
An interesting and subtle approach that is recommended within the complex instruction literatureis that of assigning competence. This is a practice that involves teachers raising the status of students
that may be of a lower status in a group, by, for example, praising something they have said or donethat has mathematical value, and bringing it to the group’s attention; asking a student to present an
idea; or publicly praising a student’s work in a whole class setting. This practice was one that I
could not fully imagine until I saw it enacted. My first awareness of it came about when a quiet
Eastern European boy muttered something in a group that was dominated by two happy andexcited Latina girls. The teacher who was visiting the table immediately picked up on it saying“Good Ivan, that is important”. Later when the girls offered a response to one of the teacher’squestions he said, “Oh that is like Ivan’s idea, you’re building on that”. He raised the status of Ivan’scontribution, which would almost certainly have been lost without such an intervention. Ivan visibly
straightened up and leaned forward as the teacher reminded the girls of his idea. Cohen (1994)
recommends that if student feedback is to address status issues, it must be public, intellectual,
specific and relevant to the group task (Cohen, 1994, p. 132). The public dimension is important asother students learn about the broad dimensions that are valued; the intellectual dimension ensuresthat the feedback is an aspect of mathematical work, and the specific dimension means thatstudents know exactly what the teacher is praising.
Two of the mathematical practices that the teachers valued that seemed particularly important in
the promotion of equity, were justification and reasoning. At Railside students were required tojustify their answers, giving reasons for their methods, at almost all times. There are many goodreasons for this – justification and reasoning are intrinsically mathematical practices (RAND, 2002;
Martino & Maher, 1999) – but these practices also serve an interesting and particular role in the
promotion of equity. The following boy was one of the lower achievers in the class, and it isinteresting to hear him talk about the ways he was supported by the practices of justification andreasoning:9

Most of them, they just like know what to do and everything. First you’re like “why you put
this?” and then like if I do my work and compare it to theirs. Theirs is like super different ‘cos
they know, like what to do. I will be like – let me copy, I will be like “why you did this? And thenI’d be like: “I don’t get it why you got that.” And then like, sometimes the answer’s just like, they
be like “yeah, he’s right and you’re wrong” But like – why?” (Juan, Y2)
Juan made it clear that he was helped by the practice of justification and that he felt comfortablepushing other students to go beyond answers and explain why their answers were given. At
Railside, the teachers carefully prioritized the message that each student had two important
responsibilities – both to help someone who asked for help, but also to ask if they needed help. Bothwere important in the pursuit of equity, and justification and reasoning emerged as helpful practices
in the learning of a wide range of students.

(4) Teaching Students to be Responsible for Each Other’s Learning
A major part of the equitable results attained at Railside was the serious way in which teachers
expected students to be responsible for each other’s learning. Many schools employ group work
which, by its nature, brings with it an element of student responsibility for others, but Railside
teachers went beyond this to ensure that students took their responsibility to each other very
seriously. One way in which teachers nurtured a feeling of responsibility was through theassessment system. For example, teachers occasionally graded the work of a group by rating thequality of the conversations groups had. In addition, the teachers occasionally gave group tests,
which took several formats. In one version – (which often prompts a sharp intake of breath fromteachers in England when I tell them about it!) – students work through a test individually, but theteachers only take in and mark one test paper from one student in each group, and that mark stoodas the mark for all the students in the group. That is a very serious way that teachers communicate
to students that they are responsible for each other as they learn! A third way in which
responsibility was encouraged was through the practice of asking one student in a group to answer
a follow-up question after a group had worked on something. If the student could not answer thequestion, the teacher would leave the group to further discussion before returning to ask the same
student again. In the intervening time, it was the group’s responsibility to help the student learn themaths they needed to answer the question.

10

The teaching strategy of asking one member of a group to give an answer and an explanation,
without help from their group-mates, was a subtle practice that had major implications for theclassroom environment. This practice meant that students were responsible to everyone in theirgroup. In the following interview extract the students talk about this particular practice and theimplications it held:
Int: Is learning math an individual or a social thing?
G: It’s like both, because if you get it, then you have to explain it to everyone else. And thensometimes you just might have a group problem and we all have to get it. So I guess both.
B: I think both - because individually you have to know the stuff yourself so that you can help
others in your group work and stuff like that. You have to know it so you can explain it to them.
Because you never know which one of the four people she’s going to pick. And it depends onthat one person that she picks to get the right answer. (Gisella & Bianca, Y2)
The students in the extract above made the explicit link between teachers asking any group member
to answer a question, and being responsible for their group members. They also communicate theshared orientation that students at Railside developed, saying that the purpose in knowing
individually is not to be better than others but so “you can help others in your group.”
The four dimensions of complex instruction – of multidimensional classrooms, student roles,
assigning competence, and shared responsibility, were enhanced by the 3 practices that the
department chose to implement and that I will review briefly.
Three Practices Leading to High and Equitable Achievement.
(1) High Expectations
It was critical to the success of the students that teachers kept the demand of lessons high, both byproviding complex problems and by following up with high-level questions. When students could
not complete questions the teachers would leave groups to work through their understanding
rather than providing them with small structured questions that led them to the correct answer. In
interviews with the students, it became clear that they appreciated the high demands placed uponthem. The students’ appreciation was also demonstrated through questionnaires. For example, oneof the questions started with the stem: “When I get stuck on a math problem, it is most helpful when
my teacher…” This was followed by answers such as “tells me the answer” “leads me through the11problem step by step” and “helps me without giving away the answer”. Students could respond toeach on a four-point scale (strongly agree, agree, disagree, strongly disagree). Almost half of theRailside students (47%) strongly agreed with the response: “Helps me without giving away theanswer,” compared with 27% of students in the ‘traditional’ classes at the other two schools. In
interviews with the Railside students it became clear that one of the things they most appreciatedabout their teachers was the fact that they gave them hard work which they interpreted as theteachers believing in them.
(2) Effort Over Ability.
In addition to the actions in which teachers engaged, the teachers also gave frequent and strong
messages to students about the nature of high achievement in mathematics. Unlike many teachers in
England the Railside teachers did not believe in the idea of ‘ability’ and they, continually emphasisedthat mathematical success comes from hard work. I have already described the multidimensionalityof classrooms and the fact that teachers took every opportunity to value something students coulddo, but they also kept reassuring students that they could achieve anything if they put in the effort.
This message was heard by students and they communicated it to us in interviews. For example:
To be successful in math you really have to just like, put your mind to it and keep on trying –because math is all about trying. It’s kind of a hard subject because it involves many things. (…)
but as long as you keep on trying and don’t give up then you know that you can do it. (Sara, Y1)
In questionnaires, we offered the statement “Anyone can be really good at math if they try” 84% ofRailside students agreed with this, compared with 52% of students in the traditional classes.
(3) Clear Expectations
The final aspect of the teachers’ practice that I will highlight also relates to the expectations they
offered the students. In addition to stressing the importance of effort the teachers were very clear
about the particular ways of working in which students needed to engage. For example, the teachers
would stop the students as they were working and talking and point out valuable ways in which
they were working. In one videotaped example of this, Guillermo, the department co-chair, helped aboy named Arturo. Arturo was working on a problem about the number of pennies a person would
be able to carry, considering their weight. He stopped and told the teacher that he was confused, so
Guillermo told him to ask a specific question; as Arturo framed a question he realised what he12

needed to do and continued with his thinking. Arturo decided the answer to the question he wasworking on was “550 pennies” but then stopped himself saying “No, wait, that’s not very much.” At
that point Guillermo interrupted him saying:Wait, hold on a second, two things just happened there. Number one is, when I said “what is theexact question?” you stopped to ask yourself the exact question and then suddenly you had
ideas. That happens to a lot of students. If they’re confused, the thing you have to do is say, “OK
what am I trying to figure out? Like exactly”, and, like, say it. So say it out loud or say it in yourhead but say it as a sentence. That’s number one and number two, then you checked out theanswer and you realized the answer wasn’t reasonable and that is excellent because a lot of
people would have just left it there and not said, “what, 500 pennies? That’s not very much.”(Guillermo, Math department co-chair)
Prior to the beginning of new work teachers set out the valued ways of working, encouraging
students to, for example, pick “tricky” examples when writing a book (one of the projects they
completed) as they would “show off” the mathematics that they knew; they also encouraged
students individually as shown in the example above. The teachers communicated very clearly to
students how they could achieve and what the teachers were looking for. This was also true of theteachers in the school in England that I studied (see Boaler, 2009) who also brought about highachievement and equitable outcomes.

Relational Equity
It would be hard to spend 4 years in the classrooms at Railside without noticing that the students
were learning to treat each other in more respectful ways than is typically seen in schools and that
ethnic cliques were less evident in the mathematics classrooms than they are in most schools.
Further, such behavior did not just happen to take place in a mathematics classroom; it was
fundamentally related to the students’ conceptions of and work within mathematics. Thus, the workof students and teachers at Railside was equitable partly because they achieved more equitableoutcomes on tests, with few achievement differences for students of different ethnic or gendergroups, but also because they learned to act in more equitable ways in their classrooms. Because theteachers valued different ways of seeing and solving problems, students learned to appreciate thecontributions of different students, from many different cultural groups and with many different
characteristics and perspectives. The students reported that ethnic cliques did not develop in their13school because of the ways they worked in their maths classes. It seemed to me that the students
learned something extremely important, that would serve them and others well in their futureinteractions in society, which is not captured in conceptions of equity that deal only with test scoresor treatment in schools. I propose that such behavior is a form of equity, and I have termed it
relational equity (see also Boaler, 2008).
It is commonly believed that students will learn respect for different people and cultures if they
have discussions about such issues or read about them in English or social studies classes. I proposethat all subjects have something to contribute in the promotion of equity and that maths, often
regarded as the most abstract subject removed from responsibilities of cultural or social awareness,has an important contribution to make. For the respectful relationships that Railside students
developed across cultures and genders that they took into their lives were only made possible by amaths approach that valued different insights, methods and perspectives in the collective solving ofparticular problems.
Conclusion.
Railside school offers an important case of an inner-city, low-income, comprehensive school thatbrought about high and equitable achievement. Our four-year, longitudinal study, in which wemonitored students at this and two other schools, revealed the importance of the approach that theschool employed in supporting mixed ability teaching and providing high level learning
opportunities for a wide range of students. Railside school is not a perfect place - the teachers would
like to achieve more in terms of student achievement and the elimination of inequities, and theyrarely feel satisfied with the achievements they have made to date, despite the vast amounts of timethey spend planning and working. But research on urban schools, and the experiences of maths
students in particular, tells us that the achievements at Railside are extremely unusual. Teachers
who have heard about the achievements of Railside’s maths department have asked for theircurriculum so that they may use it, but while the curriculum plays a central role in what is achievedat the school, it is only one part of a complex, interconnected system. At the heart of this system isthe work of the teachers, and the many different equitable practices in which they engage.

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References
Boaler, J. (2008). Promoting 'relational equity' and high mathematics achievement through an innovative
mixed ability approach. British Educational Research Journal. 34 (2), 167-194.
Boaler, J. (2009). The Elephant in the Classroom: Teaching Students to Learn and Love Maths. London:
Souvenir Press.
Cohen, D. & Ball, D.L. (2001) Making change: instruction and its improvement, Phi Delta Kappan,(September), pp. 73-77.
Cohen, E. (1994). Designing groupwork. New York: Teachers College Press.
Cohen, E., & Lotan, R. (Eds.). (1997). Working for equity in heterogeneous classrooms: sociologicaltheory in practice. New York: Teachers College Press.
Gutstein, E., Lipman, P., Hernandez, P., & de los Reyes, R. (1997). Culturally relevant mathematics
teaching in a Mexican American context. Journal for Research in Mathematic Education, 28(6), 709737.
Horn, I.S. (2005). Learning on the job: a situated account of teacher learning in high schoolmathematics departments. Cognition & Instruction,23(2).
Lee, C. D. (2001). Is October Brown Chinese? a cultural modeling activity system for underachieving
students. American Educational Research Journal, 38(1), 97-141.
Martino, A.M. & Maher, C. (1999) Teacher questioning to promote justification and generalization inmathematics: what research practice has taught us. Journal of Mathematical Behavior, 18(1), pp. 5378.
Oakes, J. (1985). Keeping track. How schools structure inequality. New Haven: Yale University Press.
RAND, M.S.P. (2002, October) Mathematical proficiency for all students: toward a strategic researchand development program in mathematics education (DRU-2773-OERI)(Arlington, VA, RAND
Education & Science and Technology Policy Institute.).
Schweder, R.A. (2003). Why do men barbeque? recipes for cultural psychology. Cambridge, MA:
Harvard University Press, 74-133.

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Additional Resources for Classroom Use.
http://www.sussex.ac.uk/education/profile205572.html
The website above includes 2 downloadable papers:
Boaler, J (2008). Promoting 'relational equity' and high mathematics achievement through aninnovative mixed ability approach. British Educational Research Journal.
Boaler, J & Staples, M. (2008). Creating Mathematical Futures through an Equitable Teaching
Approach: The Case of Railside School. Teachers’ College Record.
These are longer versions of this paper with more evidence and details on the approach described.
Complex Instruction:
Website:http://cgi.stanford.edu/group/pci/cgi-bin/site.cgi
Cohen, E. (1986) Designing groupwork: strategies for heterogeneous classrooms (New York,
Teacher's College Press).
Cohen, E. & Lotan, R. (Eds.) (1997) Working for equity in heterogeneous classrooms: Sociological
Theory in Practice (New York, Teachers College Press).

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