The Research Group in Educational and Sociocultural Policies, Programmes and Services (GRES) emerged from the Educational Studies and Actions Workshop (TEAE) created in 1996 by a group of teachers from the Department of Education of the UdG who wanted to undertake research from an interdisciplinary perspective using critical reflection. Their initial approach was to carry out studies and educational actions about the educator’s professional and work situation, educational practice, the different professional areas linked to education and all the aspects that respond to promoting critical thinking and transforming educational practice.

In 1999, the research policy guidelines of the UdG led to the restructure of this initiative with all the teachers who had been part of the TEAE deciding to form GRES together with other researchers.

GRES inherited the objective of contributing to ‘all the aspects that respond to promoting critical thinking and transforming educational practice’. The members of GRES are well-aware of the new educational challenges that must be faced in social and cultural areas, and to do so they have brought together teachers and researchers who take a broad, practical view of education. The name of the group attempts to cover the scope and areas of interests of our research: 

• Policies, programmes and services: We understand education from a more political angle, from the level of diagnosis or detecting shortfalls, and we address proposals and consultations more within the technical dimension of design, planning and evaluation. 
• Educational and sociocultural: GRES is concerned with analysing the policies, programmes and services linked to the areas and sectors where education intervenes. Obviously school is one educational space, but all the non-formal educational spaces and the sociocultural dimension are also powerful educational agents.

Until his retirement in 2016, the group was led by Dr Salomó Marquès Sureda, full professor of History of Education and expert in the study of primary-school teachers during the Second Spanish Republic and Franco’s Regime.