The origins of ESSA
The 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 (Bernstein, 1990, 2000) which constituted the main framework of the doctoral thesis of one of
the coordinators of the
Figure 1 - General research
programme of the
The
GTEB
was born in the seventies out of the need of updating the scientific and pedagogic knowledge of science
teachers and teacher educators in a context where teacher education was still absent from university and was made
at the school level. The major area of the
GTEB
activity was constituted by a comprehensive programme focused on
the broad subjects of Philosophy and Methodology of Science and Methodology and Organization of Education.
This programme included intensive summer courses for teachers (160 class hours) and courses for teacher trainers.
Initially directed to Biology and Geology secondary school teachers (7th-11th years of
schooling), the courses were later expanded to receive teachers of Physics and Chemistry and teachers of the
5th-6th years of schooling. The first courses
were initiated in 1971 in Lisbon by a small group of Biology
secondary school teachers and of scientists of the Science
Gulbenkian Centre with the aim of divulgating the
USA‘s Biological Science
Curriculum Studies (BSCS)
and of putting teachers in contact with new written and audiovisual
materials, giving them the opportunity of learning new scientific
and pedagogic knowledge and of living the experience of making
experiments with an investigative character. In 1975 the
GTEB
is institutionalized and the courses underwent changes in both
content and structure. The courses that had started by being based
on
BSCS
materials and methods, changed to be based on Portuguese work,
although keeping into consideration information and experience from
abroad and using some foreign materials. The courses were expanded
to various places across the country so that they could be attended
by a larger number of teachers. It was also at that time that
courses for teacher educators were held. To change educational
practices through in-service teacher education was the central aim
of the
GTEB
activities.
The belief was that the access to new scientific knowledge and the contact with new teaching models and materials,
through a methodology that made teachers live the innovative processes they were to implement, would be a path
of change of the then obsolete science education. This programme of teacher education had a considerable
influence on the science education of the time, not only directly by changing the practices of the teachers but
indirectly through the work of some of the teachers, who had attended the courses, as teachers‘ trainers,
textbook writers and examination tests constructors in the Ministry of Education.
Another area of the
GTEB
activity, intimately interlinked with teacher education, was the area of curriculum
development. Two initiatives should be singled out in this area. At the level of teacher education, the
GTEB
developed a course that was used in the teacher education programme referred above. At the school level, and
within the reform that was taking place at the time, the
GTEB
constructed in 1977 a course on environmental
science for middle school which included the book Ciências do Ambiente: Livro do professor (Domingos,
Neves & Galhardo, 1983) and several sequences of inquiry and discussion slides. Within a protocol between
the Ministry of Education and the Centre for Applied Thermodynamics of the University of Lisbon, the course
was experimented in 60 schools across the country and involved 80 teachers and 4000 students. The two present
coordinators of the
ESSA
Group had a major participation in the structuring and implementation of the course.
The course had a unique and innovative character at the level of both content and processes and was constructed
around broad unifying concepts that integrated knowledge of diverse fields such as Physics, Chemistry, Ecology,
Biology and Geography. A systemic approach also unified the course. The level of conceptual demand was very high.
The
GTEB, that developed its activity for approximately one decade, followed the trends of the time in science
education and reflected the changes and evolution in this field at national and international levels in the late
sixties and seventies. According to these trends, science education in general and Biology in particular changed
to give emphasis to science as a process, to include content themes with a unifying character and to accord
importance to activities centred on the student (Mayer, 1977). There was the belief that the new movement of
science curricula contained the potential to make science more meaningful and relevant and to develop important
competences, therefore raising the level of conceptual demand. However, a look back in the eighties showed that
science education was at a critical stage (Voss, 1983), that few questions had been raised over a period of twenty
years with regard to the aims, the efficacy of curriculum development and the activities of teacher education
(Yager, 1982) and that the sixties had left many myths to be tested about the objectives of science education
(Shayer, 1982). The United Kingdom/United States seminar of 1982 showed clearly that the enthusiasm of the sixties
and seventies had disappeared and left behind a general discontentment, with many questions calling for an answer
and many solutions to be found. Portugal was not an exception to these doubts.
In looking for answers to the problems raised by the changes introduced in the sixties, several lines of research
developed, mostly supported by psychological and epistemological assumptions about science education. For example,
the studies of cognitive development and conceptual demand of the curricula (Shayer, 1982; Shayer & Adey, 1981)
and of children's conceptions and conceptual change (e.g. Driver, Guesne & Tiberghien, 1985; Osborne & Freyberg,
1990), that started in the eighties, are part of these lines of research. It was also at that time that the
ESSA
Group was created and started the line of research Primary Socialization and Pedagogic Practice which
departs from other lines of research by integrating sociological perspectives on school learning. We believed
that the fact that the prevalent teaching-learning theories abstracted the child from her institutional and
cultural context and the school/teacher from the social context that regulates the transmission and acquisition
processes, might constitute a reason for the failure of science education in the sixties and seventies. The
recognition of the sociological context of learning, that was totally absent of both curriculum development and
teacher education, constituted a decisive step forward in the new direction taken by the group.
Evolution of the ESSA Group
The study was made up of three inter-related parts and involved 1300 students of middle and secondary school,
eleven teachers and eight schools across the country. The objective was the study of the relation between
sociological variables and students' level of science success in two distinct types of competences (low and high
level of complexity), where those variables were related to factors associated with the family socializing context
(social class, gender) and to factors associated with the school socializing context (school location and social
composition, teacher's pedagogic practice). The study showed that success in science is much lower in the case of
students of lower social classes and of girls within these classes, a difference that is mostly a consequence of a
marked differential success in the competences that require a high level of complexity. The results also showed
that the teacher's pedagogic practice is strongly influenced by the social context of the school where s/he
teaches, so that teachers develop courses with a low or high level of abstraction to meet what they consider,
consciously or unconsciously, to be the attributes of the school population they teach. Thus, the study made
evident the influence of the social context of the school on the teacher's pedagogic practice and the mediating
effect of the social group (social class and gender) on the relation between pedagogic practice and school
achievement, suggesting that between social class and science achievement lies the invisible regulation of the
social context of the school class that acts selectively on the conceptual focus of the teacher and on teacher‘s
competence to lead students to attain the required levels of achievement.
Following this study, the
ESSA
Group directed its activity to divulgate Basil Bernstein's theory in Portugal.
We made an extensive analysis of Bernstein's work and of the studies related to it, including empirical studies,
and also an analysis of the critical studies about his theory. On the basis of these analyses, texts and activities
were prepared to be used in a course - 'The Sociology of Education in Science Education'
- whose main objective was
to show the interest and importance of Bernstein's theory to educational research and practice and to suggest new
paths of pedagogic analysis and intervention at the various levels of the educational system. This course, that
took place in 1985 with the presence of Bernstein himself, was monitored by the
ESSA
researchers and was attended
by teachers and teachers' educators of middle, secondary and higher education of the areas of science and sociology
of education. The book A teoria de Bernstein em sociologia da educação (Domingos, Barradas, Rainha & Neves,
1986), published at this stage of the group activity, represented together with the course the first step to divulgate
Bernstein's theory.
Following this stage of the
ESSA
activity, a research programme represented in the diagram of figure 1, was devised.
The relation between students' social background and their science achievement in cognitive competences of distinct
levels of complexity, suggested by the results of the research that marked the beginning of the new direction taken
by the group (Domingos,1984), gave raise to a set of explanatory hypotheses based on Bernstein's concept of code.
These hypotheses led in the eighties to the first studies developed by the
ESSA
Group at the level of the 5th
-6th years of schooling, with the objective of analysing the differential processes of educational transmission in the
family and in the school and their influence on students' cognitive and socio-affective achievement. The book
Socialização primária e prática pedagógica: Vol.1 (Morais, Peneda, Neves & Cardoso, 1982) contains the main studies
made at this research stage.
Figure 2 - Studies
developed by the
The studies that followed continued to be focused on the 5th-6th years of schooling and
constituted a further stage of the research (1988-1991) that privileged depth of analysis over extension. Taking as the main theoretical
reference the concept of educational code developed by Bernstein, we intended to approach the school (un)success
in sciences in the context of the family-school interaction. The research was not limited to the study of the
direct relation between the cultural and socio-economic level of the students and their school achievement but
wanted to find out reasons associated with family and school contexts that could explain that relation and could
suggest lines of action to alter the pattern of achievement of disadvantaged children. The focus of this stage of
the research was therefore to find out the sociological components that underlie differential pedagogic practices
of family and school and understand the extent to which these practices interfere on how students answer to the
specific characteristics of the school pedagogic context.
The results obtained supported former explanatory hypotheses about the relation between students' social background and their differential achievement in sciences in cognitive competences of distinct levels of complexity and
pointed out to the importance of pedagogic discourses and practices of family and school and their inter-relation
to students' differential answer to the school context of cognitive (scientific) and socio-affective learning. The
results suggested also that the social group-learning relation is not a linear relation as within the same social
group there are differences associated with the processes of primary socialization that may mediate that relation.
The analyses of family and school pedagogic contexts and the analysis of their relation with the acquisition of
the school official pedagogic discourse suggested specific characteristics of those contexts as crucial factors
for the acquisition by students of the specific coding orientation (recognition and realization rules) for specific
instructional and regulative contexts of school learning, that is as crucial factors for school success. The book
Socialização primária e prática pedagógica: Vol.2, Análise de aprendizagens na família e na escola
(Morais, Neves, Medeiros, Peneda, Fontinhas & Antunes, 1993) contains a selection of the most important
studies of this stage of the research. This book received in 1994 the Rui Grácio Prize of the Portuguese
Society of Educational Sciences.
The stage that followed in the research kept as its central objective the analysis of the influence of
family-school and teacher-student interactions on the achievement of socially differentiated students and focused
on finding out pedagogic practices that, without decreasing the level of conceptual demand, could improve the
learning of students particularly the disadvantaged. It was also intended to understand the relations between the
specific characteristics of the pedagogic contexts of school, family and teacher education and also the acquisition
by students of recognition and realization rules needed to the production of the texts required in specific
instructional and regulative contexts of school learning. These specific contexts were, for example, the contexts
of concept understanding and problem solving.
Innovative aspects of this stage of the research were studies focused on primary and kindergarten contexts and also
analyses of the regulative context of the learning of social competences. This extension of the research to other
school levels and to other learning areas, broadened the meaning of teacher‘s level of conceptual demand.
Another innovative aspect of the research was the analyses directly focused on teachers' professional development.
Although this aspect was already present in former studies through the action-research perspective followed in
many of those studies, it only acquired an investigative dimension when we began to explore issues of the
influence of the researcher-teacher relation on teacher education. These issues have been viewed within the
conceptual and methodological framework that had been previously used in the studies of students' learning.
In this way we began to investigate the extent to which power and control specific relations that characterize
the researcher-teacher interaction are favourable to teachers professional development and the extent to which
the specific coding orientation (recognition and realization rules) is a sociological factor that mediates
the relation between the discourses and practices of the researcher (teacher educator) and the discourses and
practices of the teacher. The book Estudos para uma Sociologia da Aprendizagem (Morais, Neves et al, 2000)
contains a selection of studies carried out at this stage of the research and that are focused on various school
levels, various contexts of students' learning (scientific and social) and that, taking the school as the
centre of intervention and analysis, explore the relations between family-school-teacher education contexts.
This dimension of the research progressed with further studies that intended to increase in depth and rigour
previous studies. The pedagogic practices have then been analysed in terms of various characteristics of the
what (content and competences) and the how of the teaching-learning processes (relations between
subjects, discourses and spaces). Starting from this specification, the research has analysed the relative
importance of each one of the characteristics of the pedagogic practice on students' learning. We have studied
teachers' scientific and pedagogic competences as promoters of successful pedagogic practices and also the
scientific learning of socially differentiated students, in terms of knowledge and competences.
The recognition of the importance of looking at the teaching problematics in the global context of the educational
system, led us to making central to all research projects of the
ESSA
Group the analysis of the pedagogic
discourse in multiple contexts of educational intervention. This analysis intends at exploring the meaning
contained in the text produced in distinct pedagogic contexts. Thus the research of the
ESSA
Group has also
included studies centred on the sociological messages of monologic texts produced at various fields of the
pedagogic device. These studies have explored the recontextualizations of the pedagogic principles produced in
the field of the State (Constitution, Basic Law), in the official recontextualizing field (curricula, syllabuses,
examination tests) and in the pedagogic recontextualizing field (textbooks and software). This object of study
has been broadened to include various educational reforms, various school levels and various
disciplines/disciplinary areas and the sociological aspects to be analysed in the texts have been diversified in
order to obtain a better picture of the message contained in these texts.
In synthesis, and taking as the reference Bernstein's model of pedagogic discourse (1990, 2000), 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.
If we consider these two main dimensions of the research, the evolution of the
ESSA
Group represents a progressive
increase in depth and systematization of the empirical exploration of the concepts of Bernstein's theory. This is a
crucial aspect of the work that has been developed because it can indicate more clearly directions of research and
it can also provide data for the construction of a theoretical-empirical framework that makes evident the potential
of generalization, applicability and transference contained in that theory. Bernstein's theory has been used in the
various studies according to an approach where the very abstract concepts are translated into more simple
conceptual instruments capable of an empirical application at the level of the various contexts. The concepts
contained in the cultural reproduction and pedagogic discourse models have been the object of a successive finer
operationalization at the level of the analysis of the pedagogic discourse present in the contexts of primary and
secondary socialization, at the level of the conception, implementation and characterization of school pedagogic
practices and also at the level of the study of the pedagogic discourse present in teacher educational contexts
and curricular texts.
Table of figure 2 shows the studies related to the two dimensions of the research developed by the
ESSA
Group at
the various levels of Bernstein's model of pedagogic discourse. These studies have originated masters' and doctoral
theses and have been made available through national and international publications.
Together with working to produce new knowledge in terms of analysis and intervention, the research of the
ESSA
Group has also progressed in terms of methodology. From this point of view, the research has followed a mixed
methodological approach that integrates quantitative and qualitative aspects, following a conception that in
general privileges depth over extension of analysis. The methodological orientation is based on a rationalist
perspective, closer to a quantitative approach, but the processes of data collection and treatment have
corresponded, depending on the nature and objectives of a specific study, to methodological procedures that are
used in qualitative approaches (interviews, observation, content analysis) or quantitative approaches (closed
questionnaires, statistical analysis). The research rejects both the analysis of the empirical without a
theoretical basis and the use of the theory that does not allow for its transformation on the basis of the
empirical and has used an external language of description derived from an internal language of description where,
as defended by Bernstein (2000), theoretical and empirical are viewed dialectically. The work has progressed in
the construction and development of an external language of description that, starting from a strong structure and
conceptual rigour, provides more and more specific and precise indicators that can be used as instruments of
intervention and change. The theoretical framework that has guided the development of the external language of
description is of a sociological character and integrates concepts of Vygotsky‘s social constructivism (1978, 1992)
and concepts of Bernstein's symbolic interaccionism and structuralism (1990, 2000). The ideas of active learning in
social contexts and of teachers as creators of those contexts have been taken from Vygotsky and the concepts that
allow the definition of the contexts and the interactions that occur in them and also the analysis of students'
performance in specific learning contexts have been taken from Bernstein.
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.
References
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