ESSA (Sociological Studies of the Classroom) is a research group created in the 80s, following a former group devoted to innovation and intervention in science education - GTEB (Working Group for Biology Education) - which was part of the Department of Education of the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation and which received the support of the Science Gulbenkian Centre and of the Ministry of Education. The work, that end up of the seventies was based on psychological and philosophical assumptions, changed to integrate sociological assumptions, and broadened its scope to consider educational areas other than sciences, therefore extending its field of innovation and intervention. This change owes much to Bernstein's theory of pedagogic discourse which constituted the main framework of the doctoral thesis of one of the coordinators of the ESSA Group. This thesis was supervised by Basil Bernstein himself and was the first study of the group with a sociological character.

Taking as the reference Bernstein's model of pedagogic discourse, the research programme of the ESSA Group has been developed in two fundamental dimensions that, although theoretically related, are empirically directed to specific questions. On one hand we have developed studies directly related to the production of the pedagogic discourse at both the levels of generation and recontextualization. On the other hand we have developed studies directly focused on the reproduction of the pedagogic discourse and centred on specific contexts of the transmission of the discourse. The main aim of the former is to understand the sociological meaning of the messages contained in the pedagogic discourse produced in the context of the educational reforms by (a) analysing the general regulative discourse contained in official texts produced in distinct periods in the field of State (constitutions and basic laws) and (b) analysing the pedagogic discourse present in pedagogic texts produced in the fields of official recontextualization (syllabuses) and pedagogic recontextualization (textbooks, software and teacher education). The aim of the latter is to understand the relation between primary socialization and school pedagogic practice by analysing the instructional and regulative dimensions of the pedagogic discourse of reproduction (specific instructional and regulative discourses) at the levels of the family/community and school contexts. With regard to the school contexts we have not only studied the general context of the classroom but the specific micro contexts of the scientific and social learning. The study of teachers' professional development has been embedded in those two dimensions.

A landmark of the ESSA Group's evolution was the organization of the first symposium devoted to the sharing and discussion of the research based on Basil Bernstein' theory. This symposium was held in Lisbon in 2000 with the objective of assembling researchers of around the world who had been developing work in various areas. The book Towards a Sociology of Pedagogy: The Contribution of Basil Bernstein to Research (Morais, Neves, Davies & Daniels, 2001) contains the most important contributions to the symposium. This initiative originated further symposiums that have taken place every two years (2002 in Cape Town, South Africa; 2004 in Cambridge, United Kingdom; 2006 in Newark, USA). This path initiated by the ESSA Group has contributed to divulgate both Bernstein's theory and the empirical and theoretical research based on it. On the other hand, ESSA's research and respective publications have gained still more visibility at the international level.

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