Introducing the C³ Lab:Character. Culture. Change.
By: Shelby Clark and Lynn Barendsen
The C³ Lab is an affiliated initiative of The Good Project at Project Zero, Harvard Graduate School of Education. It serves as the collaborative home for research, design, and partnership work led by Shelby Clark, Lynn Barendsen, and colleagues that extends and builds upon decades of scholarship.
For more than three decades, researchers at The Good Project at Project Zero, Harvard Graduate School of Education have explored some of education's most enduring questions:
What does it mean to do good work?
How do young people develop character, purpose, and ethical responsibility?
What kinds of learning experiences help people thrive individually and contribute to their communities?
That work continues.
Today, we're excited to introduce The C³ Lab (Character. Culture. Change.)—an affiliated initiative of The Good Project at Project Zero that serves as the collaborative home for a growing portfolio of research, design, and partnerships focused on helping learning shape character, strengthen communities, and create positive change.
The C³ Lab builds on the foundations established through decades of Good Project research while creating space to pursue new questions, new collaborations, and new ways of connecting research with practice.
Why C³?
Character never develops in isolation.
Culture – both school culture and personal culture – shapes how people learn, what they value, and what they believe is possible.
And meaningful change happens when research informs practice, communities help shape solutions, and people work together toward a more just future.
These three ideas—Character. Culture. Change.—guide everything we do.
What we do
Our work spans four interconnected areas:
Research & Frameworks: advancing new scholarship on character, intellectual risk-taking, human development, purpose, and learning.
Practice & Tools: designing curricula, assessments, professional learning, and educational resources.
Partnerships: collaborating with schools, universities, employers, nonprofit organizations, and communities.
Systems Impact: supporting lasting change across educational institutions and broader civic systems.
Current projects include research on intellectual risk-taking in computer science education, understanding how learners define the value of postsecondary education beyond earnings, culturally grounded educator development through the Good Futures Coalition, and community-strengthening initiatives that explore belonging and civic connection.
A collaborative endeavor
The C³ Lab reflects the work of an interdisciplinary team of researchers, educators, designers, and partners, including Shelby Clark, Lynn Barendsen, Kirsten McHugh, Madora Soutter, Victoria Tse, and many collaborators across Project Zero, higher education, schools, nonprofit organizations, and communities around the world. Together, we're committed to creating research that is rigorous, practical, and responsive to the questions educators and communities are asking today.
Looking ahead
As the C³ Lab grows, we'll be sharing research findings, practical resources, reflections from the field, and opportunities for collaboration.
Whether you're a researcher, educator, school leader, nonprofit partner, policymaker, student, or simply someone interested in how learning can help people and communities flourish, we hope you'll follow along.
We're excited to see where this next chapter leads.
Welcome to the C³ Lab.
Visit us at https://thec3lab.org.