About Us

Commitment to ‘research with’

Hiatt Center research centers on the multiplicity of languages, literacies, and cultures of urban environments and developing asset-based practices in both school-based and out-of-school educational spaces.  We are cultivating a research-practice collective involving youth, school- and community-based educators, and university academics and students across Worcester and beyond. In this way, diverse knowledge, experiences, and perspectives can contribute to advancing understanding, developing transformative educational spaces, and fostering relationships that promote social and political change.

Our approach

We actively engage each other and our worlds through research. We believe research can be a means of deepening understanding and empathy, of going beneath the surface to grapple with complexity, and coming to see the wholes beyond the parts. At the core of our work is a commitment to “research with,” rather than “research on,” based on collaborative, humanizing methodologies and an underlying belief that such research can create spaces of care, transformation, and knowledge-in-action.

Our approach involves:

• Fostering communities of inquiry that work together to build new understandings through action in the world
• Supporting all participants in becoming creators of new realities that inspire, liberate, and re-envision what is possible
• Blurring the boundaries between researchers and practitioners, learners and teachers, cultural producers and consumers, and among school, university and community
• Expanding the transformative potential of the local research collective through participation in national and international networks

Mission and vision

Mission: The Hiatt Center promotes research aimed at developing cultures of learning and teaching where youth from all backgrounds are participating in, inquiring into and creating powerful educational and life opportunities, and becoming active members of a more just society.

Vision: The Hiatt Center connects youth, practitioners, and scholars in constructing educational spaces where practice and research co-develop in ways that exemplify new possibilities for community-building, knowledge creation, and broadening the impact of research. The work of the Center encompasses the worlds of schools, local neighborhoods and networks, and expanding virtual and digital spaces.