Centers at the Center

Next Level Lab

“Much of the research work that the Next Level Lab is conduct­ing is done in collaboration with practitioners in the field,” says Tina Grotzer, Ed.M.’85, Ed.D.’93, a principal research scientist and the lab’s co-founder with senior research fellow Chris Dede. The lab uses research from the fields of cognitive science, neurosci­ence, and the learning scienc­es to better understand what it means to be an expert learner and to reimagine how learning happens in both K–12 and the work world. One recent proj­ect, led by doctoral researcher Tessa Forshaw, involves partner­ing with chief learning officers in two consulting firms to conduct research with employees as they learn the flow of work. Anoth­er project with eight workforce development nonprofits looks at the role “awe” plays at work, es­pecially the “awe” moments that compel us to be more energized. Says project director Megan Cuzzolino, Ed.M.’09, Ed.D.’19, “Workers in these organizations commonly report burnout and say they need to feel some sort of emotional engagement with their work in order to persist. Many of our partners have told us this work has completely transformed how they think about workplace culture and are starting to shift their internal metrics from a focus on ‘satisfaction’ to something that incorporates this notion of awe.”

Project Zero 

When asked to highlight projects that Project Zero (PZ) is doing with practitioners in the field, co-director Liz Dawes Duraisingh, Ed.D.’12, couldn’t narrow it down. “There is so much field-fac­ing work at PZ,” she says. “It’s hard to think of projects whose work is not in the field.” Founded in 1967 by philosopher Nelson Good­man, Project Zero’s focus on the arts has expanded to exploring questions of human potential. PZ offers professional develop­ment courses, workshops, and conferences for educators around the world. They recently worked with Massachusetts teachers, the Democratic Knowledge Project at Harvard, and the Massachusetts Department of Elementary and Secondary Education to create Civic Pathways — free, teach­er-led sessions on civics instruc­tion. Principal investigator Daniel Wilson, Ed.D.’07, is collaborating with Spain’s Universidad Camilo José Cela on ways that schools can support student well-being outside the classroom. Lecturer Louisa Penfold and Steve Seidel, Ed.M.’89, Ed.D.’95, senior lectur­er emeritus, started Art/Play, a project focused on integrating art practices into Boston Public Schools’ early childhood cur­riculum. Another field-focused project, Aprendiendo a Apren­der, led by Duraisingh in collabo­ration with Panama’s Ministry of Education, is focused on changing teaching and learning practices in Panama’s public schools.

Data Wise 

In 2001, Professor Richard Mur­nane brought together research­ers from HGSE and practitioners from Boston Public Schools to explore how data inquiry could bring measurable improvements to teaching and learning. The re­sult, the Data Wise project, today offers courses at the Ed School, has published six books, and has trained more than 100 certified Data Wise coaches to work with schools and educational systems around the world to implement the Data Wise Improvement Pro­cess, an eight-step model that guides teams of educators as they work collaboratively to improve teaching and learning through the collaborative use of data. And the data isn’t limited to just “big data” collected from high-stakes tests, but also what they call “street data” collected through class­room observation and information about lived experiences gathered from students and their families. Says senior director and lecturer Kathy Boudett, “The new edition of the Data Wise book is a cele­bration of the project’s impact, featuring stories from 24 people in the field who have used the Data Wise Framework to improve learning and teaching in schools around the world.”

Saul Zaentz Early Education Initiative 

Launched in 2016, the Saul Zaentz Early Education Initiative’s goal is to transform early childhood education in the United States by conducting research, but also to work directly with the early child­hood field by offering high-qual­ity professional learning. They realized that too often, efforts to improve early childhood often overlook the critical work of train­ing adults to lead, so they started the Professional Learning Acade­my. Organized around the science of learning, the academy is geared toward policymakers, directors, administrators, and educators. Zaentz also partners locally with the Cambridge Office of Early Childhood to survey local early childhood educators to get a bet­ter sense of the makeup and per­spective of these professionals. Online, they offer a user-friendly tool, the Zaentz Navigator, to help policymakers and educators learn how others across the country are tackling ways to improve early education and care. “Ultimately,” says Professor Stephanie Jones, Zaentz co-founder, “our partner­ships with leaders result in more relevant research and higher-qual­ity settings for educators, fami­lies, and young children.”

Center for Education Policy Research 

Although “research” is prominent in this center’s name and in the work that they do, the Center for Education Policy Research (CEPR) also works closely with the field. To inform their work, they con­sult with education leaders and their broad network of partners to make sure that they’re study­ing the most pressing issues. They offer trainings for teachers, coaches, and the next generation of data leaders. Their Proving Ground project works direct­ly with school districts to help them identify challenges that im­pact their students’ achievement, and then test solutions using solid data. In 2008, they also cre­ated the Strategic Data Project, which sends data fellows into the field to work with districts, charter school networks, state education agencies, and non­profits to transform the way they collect and use data to support their goals. On their website, they offer a free toolkit on how to use video to improve teaching. 

EdRedesign 

EdRedesign is all about support­ing cradle-to-career partners in the field who are focused on creating equitable opportunities so that all children and young people can thrive in school and in life. Part of their work amplifies the work of government, social service agencies, school districts, community- and faith-based orga­nizations, for-profit and nonprofit businesses, and philanthropies. “A core tenet of our work is walking alongside practitioners and their communities to reimagine what’s possible for generations of young people and families from cradle to career,” says executive direc­tor Rob Watson, Ed.M.’18, “This work is a two-way street: We provide resources and supports to help accelerate the impact of cross-sector collaborations and working with local leaders on the front lines informs our thinking about the ever-evolving challeng­es and opportunities of our field. Additionally, we believe that bringing practitioner perspec­tives to HGSE and Harvard is crit­ical to amplify the impact of our partners on the ground, the prior­ities of our university community, and the career trajectories of our students. We’re working tireless­ly to align the worlds of research, practice, and policy to catalyze educational attainment, econom­ic mobility, and reclaim the Amer­ican Dream.”

Reach Every Reader 

When Reach Every Reader launched in 2018, their goal was big but simple: end the early lit­eracy crisis and improve reading outcomes for children in the Unit­ed States. Since then, Reach Every Reader has worked in 47 states reaching more than 58,000 chil­dren, 28,000 educators, and 7,000 parents and caregivers through re­search studies and offering public resources. One of the many prac­tice-based tools they developed is an early literacy screener, Inter­stellar Express Hotshot, designed to preemptively identify risks for reading difficulties in young children. They also created three free apps to promote pre-literacy skills through dialogue and playful interactions between children and caregivers. Under the direction of Professor James Kim, the READS Lab partnered with the Char­lotte-Mecklenburg School District in North Carolina to develop the Model of Reading Engagement (MORE), a set of tools focused on improving students’ ability to read for understanding in sci­ence, social studies, and English. “One of the hardest things in ac­ademia is to have really rigorous research that actually gets into practice and makes a difference for learners,” says senior Lecturer Liz City, Ed.D.’07. “We were able to do incredibly rigorous research and also help people in real time. I think Jimmy’s team is our very best example of that.”

Public Education Leadership Project 

Started in the fall of 2003 by fac­ulty and staff from the Ed School and the Harvard Business School, the Public Education Leadership Project (PELP) initiative set out to examine how the art and science of management could help public schools improve student per­formance. Since then, PELP has partnered with 58 urban school districts from across 27 states representing more than 5.6 million students. Each school district, at different times, worked closely with PELP to test and refine new management theories and prac­tices aimed at improving teaching, learning, and student outcomes. Their Summer Institute brings to­gether superintendents and other district personnel to focus on a strategic problem of practice, while their ABC Institute focuses on school board members and su­perintendents in member districts of the Council of the Great City Schools, a coalition of large urban school systems.

Democratic Knowledge Project 

In 2008, Professor Danielle Allen started the Democratic Knowl­edge Project at the Institute for Advanced Study, focused primar­ily on exploring the Declaration of Independence and American political thought. In 2015, Allen moved to Harvard and began to add resources for teachers. Since then, the project has partnered with nearly 60 K–16 educators from 19 local education agencies across the Commonwealth of Massachusetts to co-develop and pilot curriculum and professional development. Last summer, with the Ed School’s EdEthics and Har­vard & the Legacy of Slavery Initia­tive, the project brought together 50 K–12 educators from 23 states for a week-long summer institute on how to teach about the history and legacies of enslavement and lead classroom discussions on challenging contemporary topics. Recently, they created a full year eighth-grade civics curriculum, co-developed with Massachu­setts educators and in alignment with state standards.

Making Caring Common 

As Tricia Ross Anderson, the college admissions program di­rector at Making Caring Common (MCC), notes, “MCC’s mission is to support families and practi­tioners to promote caring, espe­cially caring across difference, in children and young people. Everything we do is applied, from our Caring Schools Network to our character review in admis­sions workshops for admissions leaders to a series of research reports written for the general public, which explore barriers to caring.” The center’s Turning the Tide initiative, first launched in 2016 and since revisited, works directly with college admissions officers to collectively encourage high school students to focus on meaningful ethical and intellectu­al engagement. A related report includes concrete recommen­dations to reshape the college admissions process. For the past two years, MCC has also been working with 100 K–12 schools to implement the center’s Relation­ship Mapping + Mental Health Initiative. Using a detalied im­plementation plan and mapping tools, schools choose from one of four strategies to help students build positive, trusting relation­ships with peers and adults.