Defining Restorative Justice and Restorative Practices
Restorative Justice (RJ) is a communal approach to prevent or respond to harm that is increasingly transforming educational settings. Initially rooted in indigenous and religious traditions, restorative justice entails a comprehensive view of justice that goes beyond punishment; it focuses on healing, ensuring social support, and promoting active accountability.
These aspects contribute to a sense of community ownership and participation in addressing harm and ensuring justice, thereby fostering a climate of cooperation, respect, and mutual understanding.
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Restorative Justice in Education: What it is and Why it Matters Today
The greater education system is not devoid of controversy, conflict, and direct harm. Many educators and professionals seeking innovative solutions have found that implementing restorative practices in educational settings creates a more empathetic and inclusive environment.
Conflicts and harms are not just met with punishment; instead, they are resolved constructively through open dialogue and active participation. This serves dual purposes — it aids in repairing harm and prevents the recurrence of such harmful behaviors by highlighting the effects of actions on the community.
What is Restorative Justice in Schools?
What are Restorative Practices in Schools?
What is Restorative Justice in Schools?
Restorative Justice in schools is a process that seeks to build relationships to address and resolve conflicts by focusing on the needs of both victims and offenders, affected family members, and other community members. This approach emphasizes repairing the harm caused by misbehavior rather than applying traditional punitive measures.
As an educational tool, restorative practices are incredibly influential. They manage conflicts effectively and help create a positive learning atmosphere that is inclusive, supportive, and fosters empathy among students and teachers.
The strengths of restorative justice lie in its potential to transform relationships and build communities — its outcomes are not restricted to resolving a specific conflict but ripple out to restore and strengthen community bonds.
This transformative process can influence students’ social-emotional development and shape the school culture, nurturing citizens capable of engaging and contributing constructively in broader societal circles.
1.Enriching community connections 2.Resolving any wrongdoing that might damage these connections
At their core, restorative practices aim to foster open dialogue, encourage empathy and involve all concerned parties in conflict resolution.
One practical example of restorative practice in schools is the use of dialogic processes known as “restorative circles” or “community circles” as means of building relationships and community, discussing issues, and addressing conflict. To address rule violations, schools may employ “restorative conferences” where the person who caused the harm, the person harmed, and relevant community members come together to understand, address the wrongdoing, and decide on reparative actions.
These restorative processes foster a culture of respect, understanding and collective responsibility, effectively contributing to a healthier learning environment.
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How are Restorative Practices Used in Schools?
Implementation of restorative practices that respond to harmful behavior in schools is a systematic process comprising the following stages:
Pre-Conference Preparation
In this initial stage, facilitators gather detailed information about the conflict or harm. They engage with the involved parties, soliciting their individual perspectives and accounts of the incident. This process is essential as it helps to establish a comprehensive understanding of the situation, thus enabling the facilitator to prepare a suitable environment for effective discussion during the conference.
Additionally, involving the students in the initial stages of the process encourages a sense of openness, respect, and individual agency, laying the foundations for a successful restorative conference.
Restorative Conference Facilitation
During this stage, affected students are brought together in a structured, open, and safe environment moderated by the facilitator. Here, each person can share their perspectives, expressing their feelings and thoughts about the incident.
Unlike traditional top-down disciplinary processes, this inclusive platform encourages joint decision-making. Each individual’s voice is valued and respected, establishing a cooperative atmosphere where all participants work toward finding a resolution together.
Dialogue and Understanding
One of the quintessential principles of restorative practices is fostering open dialogue and active listening. The process encourages understanding of the broader impact of harmful actions on the immediate victims and the broader school community. This eye-opening dialogue stimulates empathy among students, teachers and parents alike.
With a deeper comprehension of the repercussions of their actions, individuals can cooperatively identify possible means to address the situation, which is integral to repairing harm and preventing future conflicts.
Agreement and Follow-Up
Upon gaining collective consensus, an agreement is then drafted. This outlines the specific actions or reparations to be undertaken by the offending student to address and repair the harm caused. This could range from apologizing to those harmed, participating in community service or engaging in a learning activity relevant to the incident.
The restorative process doesn’t stop at the signing of the agreement — it extends to monitoring and supporting the execution of this agreement. Regular follow-ups ensure that the agreed-upon steps are being taken, further strengthening the sense of responsibility and accountability in the offending student while simultaneously showing the victim and school community that steps are being taken to make amends.
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Two Examples of Restorative Justice in Education
Restorative justice is not reserved for any particular age group or setting. Its principles of understanding, reconciliation, and mutual respect apply universally, even in the most diverse educational environments. In the upcoming case studies, we’ll explore two examples of RJ implementation, one from a higher education institution and another from a middle school setting.
The world of education is as dynamic as the learners it serves. Even though these settings may seem worlds apart, there is a common thread that weaves through them — the need for fairness, understanding, and unity. This is where restorative justice shines.
Example of Restorative Justice in Higher Education
While often associated with K-12 environments, restorative justice is equally applicable as a way to address and resolve instances of harm in colleges and universities.
In 2014, Dalhousie University, a major research university in Halifax, Nova Scotia, with a student population exceeding 20,000, was confronted with a significant incident of sexual harassment within its dentistry program. A small group of female students filed a complaint against several male classmates who had been maintaining a private Facebook group in which they routinely posted sexualized and degrading jokes about their female peers.
The Canadian media caught wind of the incident, which quickly evolved into a national sensation, inciting large-scale coverage and a contentious debate over the best approach for addressing such gender-based misconduct. Opinions on the matter were divided.
While the female students who filed the complaint called for a restorative justice approach, many within the university and the broader community demanded harsh punishments, specifically the expulsion of the male students. Despite the public uproar for strict punitive measures, the female students stood firm on utilizing a restorative justice process to rectify the situation.
In the Words of One of these Students:
“We saw expulsion as the exact opposite of what we wanted. We did not want to see 13 angry men expelled who had learned nothing about why what they wrote was wrong. To us, that was a cop-out. Nor did we want to just forgive and forget. . . the men still had to be accountable for their actions.”
How The Restorative Process Was Applied To This Situation
Two restorative justice facilitators led the process, one of whom was Jennifer Llewellyn, an internationally recognized restorative justice scholar and law professor at Dalhousie’s law school. Llewellyn’s unique relational theory of justice informed the process.
In Llewellyn’s terms, justice can only occur when those most impacted by the outcome have the opportunity to participate in the decision-making process considering the context, causes, and circumstances of incidents to guarantee comprehensive responses.
During this stage, the RJ facilitators conducted over 40 interviews, providing a space for those harmed to explain the impact of the men’s actions. The cultural context that may have contributed to or supported the harm was also analyzed during these interviews. This comprehensive process ensured all parties could consider what actions the men could take to assume full responsibility and address the harm that ensued.
Following the interviews, the male students attended educational modules and workshops focused on sexualized violence.
In a series of restorative circles, the male students engaged in dialogues with the harmed women and many members of the campus and local community, working to understand the extent of the harm they had caused.
The culmination of these dialogues was a set of institutional commitments agreed upon by the participants and university leadership. These commitments were based on the principles of:
Community building,
Inclusion and equality,
Professionalism and ethics,
Curriculum and program structure,
Reporting process and conflict resolution.
Example of Restorative Justice in Middle School
In a sixth-grade math class, two boys decided to stir up trouble by yelling profanities, one of which was a derogatory term offensive to the LGBTQIA+ community. This disturbance halted the day’s instruction. The students were black, had no record of misbehavior, and were well-connected with their classroom teacher and co-teacher — a white, middle-aged, gay male and a white, middle-aged female (respectively).
The school administration lacked a system for managing conflict involving adults. Therefore, this incident, involving students who otherwise had a clean conduct record and good relationships with their teachers, presented a unique challenge demanding a restorative justice approach.
The Restorative Process
Given the unique nature of this incident, the restorative justice facilitator initiated a four-harm model approach. The students were prompted before the restorative conference to reflect upon the following four layers of harm instigated by their actions.
Emotional harm
Physical and financial harm
Damaged relationships
Inflamed structural and historical harms like racism and homophobia
Before the conference, the students acknowledged the relational harm they had caused to their teacher and classmates and the material harm evident in the loss of valuable instructional time.
When asked about the inflamed structural harm, the boys were clueless, revealing they did not even know the meaning of the derogatory term they had used. Recognizing their need to understand the deep harm associated with that offensive, homophobic word, the facilitator arranged a session with the math class co-teacher, with whom the students respected and warmly connected. Given her strong grounding in history, she provided developmentally appropriate education regarding the historical persecution within the LGBTQIA+ community.
In the conference involving the students and the teacher affected by the offensive language incident, the facilitator asked the students to share their reflections since the incident. One student, obviously moved by the newfound knowledge, expressed his shock at the parallelism of the oppression suffered by the LGBTQIA+ community and that experienced by the black community. The students’ empathetic responses deeply moved the facilitator.
The conference meeting, filled with love, healing and grace, segued into forgiveness and relationship mending. The students clearly connected to the harm they had caused to their teacher, relating it to their own inherited trauma. They learned that the derogatory term they had used was not merely inappropriate but offensive and hateful — an insidious manifestation of bias inextricably linked with their experience as young black boys.
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Learn to Implement Restorative Practices in your School or Classroom with the Proper Training & Education
Make a difference in your school, college or university with the principles of restorative justice. Equip yourself with the skills needed to foster understanding and unity, contributing to a culture of empathy and growth in your school or classroom.
The Center for Restorative Justice
SOLES Center for Restorative Justice is a hub for innovation, education, and capacity-building. As a global social movement, restorative justice has significance across K-12 schools, higher education institutions, workplaces, community organizations, and criminal justice agencies; SOLES prepares restorative justice leaders who create change within and beyond higher education.
Master of Arts in Restorative Justice Facilitation & Leadership
The Master’s in Restorative Justice at SOLES is designed to create leaders adept in restorative practices. The program combines the theoretical foundations of restorative justice while instilling practical skills for real-world application, allowing you to engage with the curriculum in a meaningful way. The community-centric restorative justice curriculum at SOLES involves partnerships with local organizations to solve real-world challenges and provide tailored solutions.
Heal Harm in your Schools, Communities & Beyond by Earning your Master's from USD SOLES
Join us and make a substantial impact on your community. Our Master’s in Restorative Justice focuses on equipping you with the skills to reconcile, heal, and build stronger relationships.
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