Depth and Complexity - What is It?

Depth and Complexity is a thinking framework that uses 11 icons to help students examine any topic through specific lenses like patterns, ethics, perspectives, and change over time. Created by Sandra Kaplan, Bette Gould, and Sheila Madsen in the 1990s, the framework gives teachers a shared language for pushing student thinking beyond surface-level understanding across every grade and subject.

Depth means going deeper into one topic. The details, patterns, rules, and ethics within it. These are represented by icons, shared below.

Depth and Complexity Icon Meanings:

🏛️ Big Idea — The overarching concept. Not the topic. The idea underneath the topic.
🌻 Essential Details — The facts that actually matter. Not all of them. The essential ones.
👄 Language of the Discipline — The words experts use. Not vocabulary lists. The language that changes how you think about a subject.
🚦 Rules — The structure. Laws, hierarchies, norms. What happens when you break them.
🌀 Patterns — Repetitions you can predict. Unlike rules, patterns can break without consequence.
⚖️ Ethics — Dilemmas. Ambiguity. Problems with no clean answer.
⏳ Change Over Time — How something has evolved. Past, present, future.
👓 Multiple Perspectives — Different viewpoints on the same thing. Not just “how does Character X feel?”
❓ Unanswered Questions — What we don’t know. What we can’t know.
📚 Across Disciplines — Where this topic touches other subjects.
📈 Trends — What’s changing right now and why.

You don’t need all 11 at once. Pick 2-3 Depth and Complexity prompts per lesson.

Source: Byrdseed.tv

What Are Depth and Complexity Question Stems?

Depth and Complexity question stems are the actual questions you attach to each icon.

The stem changes the thinking level, not just the topic. Whether you call them question stems, prompts, or Depth and Complexity questions, they all mean the same thing: the question a student sees.

The tble to the right demonstrates how to shift from labeling to thinking when it comes to creating question stems for students.