Restorative Practices in Education: Building Community and Transforming Schools
Many schools rely on exclusionary discipline, such as suspensions and expulsions, intending to reduce misbehavior and improve school safety. However, research indicates that exclusionary discipline ultimately increases misbehavior, undermines school climate, reduces achievement, and increases dropout and incarceration rates. Long-standing research also documents the disproportionate use of punitive discipline practices for students of color and students with disabilities.
Restorative practices offer an alternative approach, designed to build a strong sense of community in schools, teach interpersonal skills, repair harm when conflict occurs, and proactively meet students’ needs. This includes addressing needs resulting from trauma in or outside of school, so misbehavior is less common. Instead of punishment, restorative practices address school discipline by focusing on developing communication strategies and building relationships.
What are Restorative Practices?
In education, restorative practices represent a way of thinking, being, and interacting that promotes a safer, more supportive learning environment. Restorative practices work to repair harm through learning and community participation. Restorative practices in schools focus on cultivating a positive, respectful, and inclusive school environment.
Restorative practices are an outgrowth of restorative justice, providing ways to prevent and/or constructively address conflict and harmful behavior. Restorative practices in education are intended to build community and maintain healthy relationships. Since all learning is social by nature, strong relationships fostered by restorative processes play a powerful gatekeeping role. Restorative practices in schools aren’t only an alternative to discipline.
The science of learning and development indicates that students will be most inclined to demonstrate positive behavior when their school climates and relationships inspire feelings of trust, safety, and belonging. Initially framed in terms of restorative justice, this approach began as a strategy of responding to unwanted behavior with strategies for mediation, helping students reflect on the results of their behavior, and finding ways to make amends to rejoin the community, rather than being pushed out of school.
Read also: Repairing Harm in Educational Settings
Core Principles of Restorative Practices
The basic concept of restorative justice includes:
- Shifting from punishment to reflective learning: Students react better to reflecting on their mistakes, being accountable, and apologizing for their actions.
- Raising student awareness: Students become aware of how their actions caused the problematic situation.
- Community participation: This fosters the healing process, including practicing empathy, owning harmful behavior, and making restitution.
Restorative justice shows young people that conflict resolution through communication has a positive impact when compared to using harsh disciplinary action to correct misbehavior. It is important to teach students the difference between restorative practice and the harmful "criminal justice" system of behavior correction.
Key Components of Restorative Practices
Restorative approaches to building school community and encouraging positive behavior require a significant shift away from how schools and districts have traditionally attended to discipline and school culture. For many, this requires unlearning practices and perspectives on accountability that have been predominant, not only in our schools but in society at large.
Restorative practices range from the informal to the formal. In a restorative school environment, staff and students typically have a shared vocabulary that enables community members to express feelings in a healthy, productive way.
Among restorative practices are classroom meetings, community-building circles, and conflict resolution strategies that all adults and students use. Examples of restorative practices include:
Read also: Practices in Student-Centered Learning
- Affective Statements: These focus on the perceptions and feelings of the speaker rather than the actions or attributes of the listener.
- Impromptu Student Conferences: These are used to redirect a student’s behavior in a way that minimizes disruption to instructional time. A teacher might use an impromptu conference if she notices a student distracted by side conversations.
- Restorative Circles: These are structured processes guided by a trained facilitator, typically a teacher or other school staff member. A circle can be used for a wide range of purposes, such as building community, helping students connect their experiences to academic content, or welcoming a student back to school after an extended absence. There is a strong emphasis on the importance of listening, facilitated by using a talking piece. Participants know that they may speak when they are holding the talking piece but that otherwise, their job is to listen.
- Restorative Conferences: These are similar to restorative circles but are used specifically to facilitate conflict resolution. Conferences are typically mediated by a skilled facilitator who has been trained on the restorative line of questioning. The facilitator will guide the participants through questions, such as the following: What happened? What were you thinking when this happened? Who was affected by what happened? What needs to happen to make this situation right?
- Restorative Welcome: The restorative circle process (or "restorative welcome") gives the school or classroom community space to invite a student back to school after they took part in a harmful event. Instead of permanently shunning or expelling students, this method provides a gentler way to reintegrate a student into school, rebuild relationships and promote a supportive climate.
Benefits of Restorative Practices in Education
Restorative practices in schools continue to grow and create fair ways to reduce repeat infractions, combat poor attendance, and prevent bullying. It also strengthens the ties between you and your students.
A growing body of research indicates that restorative practices are beneficial. As research findings accrue, they point toward positive impacts of restorative approaches on student behavior, disciplinary outcomes and disparities, and school climate. Numerous descriptive studies have found that restorative practices are not only associated with improvement in student behavior (e.g., decreases in fighting and bullying), but also with a decrease in office referrals, classroom removals, suspensions, and expulsions.
Here are some key benefits of restorative practices:
- Help students take responsibility: When students take ownership of the conflicts they created, they develop self-awareness of how their actions can negatively affect someone. Instead of blame-shifting, students realize where they went wrong and find positive ways to repair their mistakes. They'll become productive members of society who understand the difference between right and wrong.
- Make students aware of consequences: For every negative action, there is a consequence. When students discover what they could lose, they might think twice about their actions and reactions. They should be told about the school district's zero-tolerance policy for bullying and violence.
- Teach students conflict resolution: Solve problems through communication, patience, and understanding instead of fighting. Encourage them to talk about their feelings, brainstorm good solutions, and set goals to maintain peace. Other good resolutions include remaining calm and apologizing.
- Build emotional skills: Make students feel heard and emotionally validated by cultivating social-emotional learning skills. Focus on self and social awareness, emotional management, relationship skills, and responsibility.
- Help students practice empathy: Show kids empathy and teach them to restore peace to frayed relationships. Students learn by observing, so why not demonstrate empathy to your class by showing them you care? Give them examples of what it's like to feel another person's emotions.
- Teach students to embrace forgiveness: Forgiveness isn't about condoning someone's wrongdoing but learning to let go of its harmful emotional impact. Explain to your class that forgiveness involves releasing their anger toward the person who wronged them. Reinforce in their mind that it takes time to learn how to forgive and that holding a grudge harms them more than the person who hurt them.
- Show the importance of communication: Demonstrate how to have pleasant conversations. Show your students how to take turns during conversations. They need to understand it is polite to listen without interruptions. Model appropriate behavior and use role-playing activities to help show your class the difference between acceptable and negative behavior.
- Build strong relationships: Restorative justice is crucial for improving relationships between students, teachers, and school administrators. Social and emotional learning (SEL) strategies can help educators to foster good relationships with their students. Show students that you genuinely care about them, work toward building trust, and spend time getting to know their parents. It's fundamental to their education and well-being to have consistent open communication and support from teachers.
- Teach students how to respect different cultures and beliefs: Use photos, videos, and current events to develop culturally responsive teaching strategies. It's vital for kids to learn respect for other cultures and understand that nearly everyone has different practices and beliefs. Encourage your students to make friends from a variety of cultures to help them appreciate how other people live their lives.
- Help community building: Restorative circles play an important role in addressing challenges that students face. Begin by creating a safe space for students to learn empathy, patience, and compassion for others. Use your students' input to decide which topics of discussion they want to address, such as mutual respect and problems surrounding racism. Help students build community through restorative circles and make them more proactive when it comes to developing meaningful connections and promote healing.
- Encourage students to face fears: Let your students know everyone has fears and concerns. Help your class to overcome their fears through distracting physical or mental activities and conversation. Explain that there are ways to arrive at a solution for every problem. They can write a shortlist of solutions and how to implement a plan to execute one or more of those solutions.
Implementing Restorative Practices in Schools
Every teacher has their own approach to school discipline. But in recent years, restorative practices have emerged in schools as a new and better way to correct student behavior. Instead of punitive punishment, restorative practices in education promote a positive mindset change in teachers and students. Educators should implement these practices to foster and maintain mutual respect, resolve problems through a supportive environment, and make positive changes. When teachers show that problems and obstacles are opportunities for growth and improvement, students learn they can achieve a positive outcome in any situation.
Implementing restorative practices in your classroom doesn’t have to be done all at once. In fact, it is easier - and you as a teacher will find more success - to add RJ strategies slowly in ways that work for your classroom environment. Circles are one of the pillars of restorative justice in schools and are a great starting point for teachers looking to use more RJ practices. Circles are a whole class activity designed to help the class community set their expectations and standards of behavior for the environment. During the circle exercise, students and teachers alike are encouraged to share their goals, what worries them, and how they want to interact with their classmates. Circles are also used after an incident that needs remedying. In a post-event circle, all relevant stakeholders will meet with a teacher who acts as the mediator for the discussion.
Read also: Unlocking Potential with Mindfulness
Communication is vital in any restorative justice model, so any RJ practices should start with focused communication practice. In your classroom, find ways to demonstrate clear, thorough communication skills. Skills like problem-solving, empathy, positivity, and communication are all critical for restorative practices to be effective. Restorative justice relies on the classroom truly feeling like a community - a sense of closeness, honesty, trustworthiness, and dependability are all important ingredients. One way to foster these feelings is by holding circle discussions every day. As you know, restorative justice practices involve the perpetrator and the victim (for lack of better terms) resolving issues together. To build a foundation for this type of interaction, allow students to independently communicate about issues that may have been taboo before. Restorative justice practices take students and their personal lives into account, so it’s only logical that you would take time to get to know more about each pupil in your class. Depending on the age group this can be intimidating or even hard to accomplish, but students at the minimum should know they are encouraged to share.
Here's a list of strategies to help you use restorative practices in your class:
- Building a school community: Teach your students how restorative practices help them learn and grow from their mistakes. They'll develop the ability to remain accountable and solve problems through responsible decision-making. Invite them to discover the root cause of problems so they can find constructive ways to fix their mistakes. To help build a sense of community in your class and school:
- Create common ground for everyone affected by the problem
- Open a dialogue between affected parties to facilitate healing
- Use calming techniques to help students overcome tension and anxiety
- Arrive at a resolution to help everyone heal and recover from the conflict
- Offer students workable solutions on how they can repair any harm they caused
- Hold weekly class meetings to check in with students or discuss problems as they ariseRemember, the goal is to unite rather than divide everyone affected by conflicts.
- Establishing classroom norms: Involve your students in deciding the classroom rules and norms. Ask your students to work with you to create a list of acceptable behaviors, problem-solving methods for students and yourself, and effective ways to respect each other. Discuss non-punitive disciplinary action for outbursts and other negative behaviors. Provide simple examples of how to change negative behavior into a positive one. Ask your students questions such as, "If you're angry, how can you turn that around and feel less tension sooner?" When kids learn how to self-regulate their thoughts and emotions, they'll notice a difference in the way they feel and react. Keep in mind that it takes time to become a master of your thoughts! Bridge gaps to promote healing and acceptance, reduce poor attendance, and minimize repeat offenses. Help students realize they have the power to change their behavior with help from their teachers and school administrators.
- Restorative conversations: Restorative conversations encourage teachers and students to share their feelings without guilt or judgment. Follow a restorative approach to conversations that offers students effective ways to repair harm. These questions will help you get started on the path toward restorative conversations:
- Who else is affected by your actions?
- What can you do to remedy the situation?
- What happened to make you feel this way?
- How were those people affected by the conflict?
- What were your thoughts when the incident happened?These questions promote constructive conversations that correct misbehavior and teach students how to tackle problems on their own.
- Respect agreements: Display respect agreements on walls to remind students what it means to show respect toward each other, their teachers, and school property.
- Write a list of how students should respect each other. There are basic rules for everyone to follow, such as being kind, well-mannered, cooperative, and refraining from using inappropriate language.
- Add another list of how students need to respect teachers. The list can include paying attention and not interrupting class, sympathetic attitudes, abiding by school rules, and raising their hand to speak.
- Write the third list yourself and share it with the class. Consider these key points to share: be kind to all students and listen to them when they need your help, make school assignments interesting and fun, and don't pile on too much homework.
- Finally, create a fourth list that focuses on students and teachers respecting school property. No littering or vandalism, follow school rules without bending them, and keep your desks clean.Basic agreements reinforce acceptable behavior and teach learners to practice respect every day. Create a student Code of Conduct handout and share it with your class. Encourage them to take the handout home to show their parents.
- Restorative inquiry: Restorative inquiry helps teachers open a calm dialogue with students to repair harm. Teachers might involve one or more students to inquire about the conflict, coax them to repair the damage, and restore peace to relationships. Restorative inquiries also help people harmed by another person's actions. The following questions help you discuss harmful incidents with your student(s):
- What do you think needs to make this right?
- What were your thoughts when the episode occurred?
- What was the hardest part about this problem for you?
- How did this incident impact you and others that were caught up in the same incident?
- Restorative circles: Restorative circles should have a purpose, whether it's to establish ground rules, resolve conflicts, welcome a student back to the fold, or set boundaries. There are a number of ways you can create restorative circles for in-person or virtual classes. Nominate a circle-keeper to begin conversations and pay close attention to the well-being of students. The circle-keeper can be a student, guidance counselor, or teacher. Make it clear that this is a safe space for students to express their feelings without discrimination. Talk about relevant issues pertaining to recent problems or to create meaningful connections between learners. Mention community agreements to promote active communication, patience, understanding, acceptance, and honesty. Close the circle by thanking students for their willingness to take part, heal, and recover from harmful incidents. When you hold restorative circles, be sure to have a clear purpose in mind and share that with your students. They need to feel they're part of the solution.
Continually Improving Restorative Practices
As more schools add restorative practices to improve disciplinary measures, it's important to refine these processes. Schools should know communication methods can evolve and educators need to adapt to these modifications. Staff must be receptive to professional development and training to make restorative practices a collaborative effort.
To make sure restorative justice is successful in your school:
- Look for opportunities that include future amendments and improvements.
- Realize that minor changes should happen gradually to make it easier for everyone to adjust.
- Review results to see if the changes make sense or if they should be abandoned for alternate solutions.
- Cast a wider net to encourage positive changes in the school culture if the transformation was good for students.
- Don't be afraid to ask your students for their thoughts and opinions on how best to use adaptive changes to the current restorative practice.
Make restorative practices part of everyday life so that your students reap consistent benefits.
Addressing Systemic Issues
Repeated police violence against unarmed Black civilians, made more visible by the attention focused on George Floyd’s murder in 2020, has led to nationwide calls to overhaul policing both in society and in schools, where mistreatment of Black students and other students of color has been consistently documented. As a result, many districts have recently taken action to remove police from their schools, including several large urban districts, such as Seattle and Minneapolis.
Zero-tolerance approaches were accompanied by a surge of hard security in schools, including the widespread use of security equipment-such as surveillance cameras and metal detectors-and the increased presence of school resource officers to monitor student behavior. As a result, incidents previously resolved internally by educators, such as class disruptions or physical altercations, are more often referred to school police and then to municipal police. Though an assumed benefit of removing misbehaving students from school is a more orderly environment, schools with greater levels of student exclusion have poorer ratings of school climate. Research indicates that, rather than deterring future misbehavior, exclusionary discipline policies increase the likelihood of future misbehavior.
Challenges and Considerations
Research has also pointed out-both directly and indirectly-the challenges in implementing restorative practices. Because restorative approaches require a substantial shift away from traditional discipline and school climate practices, the work of integrating restorative approaches into school settings is complex and takes time. Restorative practices are most successful when they are incorporated into educational settings that use a range of strategies to promote positive school climates and relationships.
Because restorative methods represent a departure from the way that schools have traditionally approached discipline and school culture, building practitioners’ capacity to operate within a restorative framework is essential. Support of leadership is critical for two reasons: First, school leaders must understand and be able to model restorative practices and provide feedback to their staff. Second, when school leaders are invested in restorative approaches, they are able to serve as necessary champions for school-level change. Because of the sustained and intensive supports required for implementation, investment in restorative approaches is a long-term endeavor, not a quick fix.
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