Cooperative learning is one of the possible strategies to promote equity in heterogeneous classrooms for its potential capacity to recognize and enhance different abilities in school contexts. The Cooperative Learning approach developed by E. Cohen at Stanford University, called "Complex Instruction" (CI), explicitly meets the criteria of intercultural education recognizing that each student can bring different intellectual abilities and skills to the learning process. Furthermore it and gives low status students the opportunity to give their contribution to the task set and so to participate equally in groupwork. For these reasons, CI was chosen for a European Commission's Socrates Programme (CLIP-Project, 1997-1999) and, subsequently, as a central approach for an in-service teacher training program and experimentation of original teaching CI units for different school levels. This project, supported by the Intercultural Centre of Bologna and the University of Turin (F. Gobbo), began in May 2004 and it is still ongoing. From data collected from participant observation of units tested twice in classrooms and from teachers interviews, the paper aims at investigating critically CI strategy relating to the educational and professional context of experimentation. The purpose of this contribution is to discuss if and how CI works in Italian classrooms and how such educational strategy raises teachers' competences with particular regard to intercultural aims. The research will study the complex learning process taking place in the different classrooms where I observed how teachers explained and organized group work and how pupils went about working cooperatively (social dynamics and degree of learning within groups). Qualitative research methods: participant observation in 5 classroom of Primary Schools in Bologna in 2005 By comparing and sharing data from observation and interviews and through additional discussions with the teachers involved, it appeared that learning about CI, and experimenting with it, brought a different kind of professional awareness to the Bologna teachers: they realized how they had taken for granted the culture of the school and how this had shaped their usual way of teaching and organizing learning activities, as well as their interaction with students and their expectations. Starting from these points, I am developing a qualitative research in order to problematize in the Italian social-cultural-political context Cohen's educational innovation, taking into consideration how such ideas and strategies are creatively interpreted when they reach a new environment. AUGELLI A., GOBBO F., PESCARMONA I., TRAVERSI M., Cooperative learning nelle classi multiculturali. Uno sguardo all'istruzione complessa, in Quaderno di formazione interculturale, CD/Lei, Bologna, 2005. BATELAAN P. (ed), Towards an equitable classroom. Final report of Cooperative Learning in Intercultural Education Project (CLIP), Hilversum: IAIE, 1998. COHEN E. G., LOTAN R. A. (eds.), Working for Equity in Heterogeneous Classrooms. Sociological Theory in Practice, New York, Teachers College Press, 1997 COHEN E. G., Organizzare i gruppi cooperativi. Ruoli, funzioni, attività, Trento, Edizioni Erickson, 1999. FLORIO-RUANE S., La cultura e l'organizzazione sociale della classe scolastica, in GOBBO F., Antropologia dell'educazione, Carocci, 1996. GOBBO F., Pedagogia interculturale. Il progetto educativo nelle società complesse, Roma, Carocci, 2000 GOBBO F., Teaching Teachers Cooperative Learning: an intercultural challenge, in "Social Justice and Intercultural Education: an open-ended dialogue", Sarajevo, forthcoming LOTAN R., Stepping into groupwork, in COEHN E., BRODY C., SAPON-SHEVIN M. (eds.), Teaching Cooperative Learning: the challenge for teacher education, SUNY Press, Albany, 2004, pp. 167-182 LOTAN R., Teaching teachers to build equitable classrooms, Stanford University (in press)