Home → Resources → Programme Resources → Articles → Schools

Schools

Up one level

Restorative Practices in New School Discipline Policy

At its August 2008 meeting, the Denver Public Schools board approved a new discipline policy that includes restorative interventions. Created by a coalition school board members and community groups, the new policy seeks to lower the district's reliance on suspension and referral to law enforcement agencies. At the same time, they seek to give students and their parents more of a voice in the disciplinary process.

Introducing Restorative Practices into Scottish Schools

In 2004, the Scottish Executive allocated funding for a 30-month pilot project to introduce restorative practices into schools in three Local Authorities. An August 2007 evaluation report outlines the implementation process for the different areas and the progress made in establishing restorative practices in the school.

Flanagan, Helen. Restorative Approaches in Sefton: The Behaviour Improvement Programme.

Since the project began in September 2003 a comprehensive training programme has been developed to provide staff,pupils and parents with a range of positive strategies for addressing issues of behaviour and attendance. 18 partner schools, from Primary,Secondary and Special EBD schools make up the Behaviour Improvement Project in Sefton. All the schools appointed a Lead Behaviour Professional (LBP) who leads the training and cascading of training to all staff.The LBP is a senior member of staff who models appropriate positive interventions with all members of the school community. As the schools had adopted solution focussed ways of working,a move towards formal restorative practice seemed sensible.In May 2004 close links were developed with the Sefton Centre for Restorative Practice which has led the development of Restorative Practice, and the centre's staff provided Real Justice Training for BIP schools. (excerpt)

Boulton, John and Mirsky, Laura. Restorative Practices as a Tool for Organizational Change: The Bessels Leigh School

The Bessels Leigh School, in Abingdon, Oxfordshire, England, a residential special school for boys with emotional and behavioral difficulties, age 11-16, has seen a remarkable change in culture, due to restorative practices. Via restorative processes both formal and informal, the approximately 28 pupils are encouraged to express their emotions and feelings and consider those of others. In a very powerful way they are made aware of the consequences of their behavior and can recognize the harm that their actions have caused. In partnership with the IIRP and Real Justice UK and SaferSanerSchools UK, Bessels Leigh School is on track to become a demonstration school for restorative practices in the UK. (excerpt)

Adams, Helen and Cronin-Lampe, Ron and Cronin-Lampe, Kathy and Jenner, Kerry and Drewery, Wendy and Cronin-Lampe, Ron and Macfarlane, Angus H and Drewery, Wendy and McMenamin, Donald and Cronin-Lampe, Ron and Jenner, Kerry and Macfarlane, Angus H and Winslade, John and Drewery, Wendy and McMenamin, Donald and Cronin-Lampe, Ron and Cronin-Lampe, Kathy and Macfarlane, Angus H and Winslade, John and Drewery, Wendy and Prestidge, Brian and McMenamin, Donald and Cronin-Lampe, Ron and Cronin-Lampe, Kathy and Jenner, Kerry and Macfarlane, Angus H and Winslade, John and Drewery, Wendy. Restorative Practices for Schools, A Resource: Human Development and Counselling Monograph 1

This booklet has been prepared for the use of a range of educational professionals who are interested in introducing restorative practices in their school. The materials were originally prepared for the use of schools for the purpose of reducing suspensions. (excerpt)

Anonymous. A Restorative Response to Harm in Schools

This brief article discusses restorative responses to bullying as a way of responding to the needs of both the bully and the one being bullied.

Claassen, Roxanne. "Discipline that restores. "

An elementary school teacher, Claassen became familiar with mediation and cooperative problem solving through work with a victim offender reconciliation program. Here she describes the application of restorative conflict resolution in a school setting. The principles and practices of problem solving in her classroom involve rules with consequences - consequences that aim to be restorative rather than punitive. To show how all of this works, she provides examples from the classroom.

Silver, Jeff and Vermander, Karin. Managing school conflict: The peer mediation approach

Silver and Vermander note the variety and persistence of conflict in human experience. Yet, they maintain, well-managed conflict can catalyze positive change for people and relationships. With this in mind, Silver and Vermander explore conflict management in schools through peer mediation programs. Key topics discussed in their paper include the following: three models of peer mediation; implementing peer mediation; and specific results of peer mediation. Examples of programs at certain schools highlight principles and processes of peer mediation. Silver and Vermander close their paper with an account of their collaboration in writing the paper - both the conflicts they experienced and the processes they employed to deal with them.

Thorsborne, Margaret. School violence and community conferencing: The benefits of restorative justice.

In the context of school violence, Thorsborne maintains that community conferencing is an effective process for dealing with violent incidents. To support this, she summarizes the history of community conferencing in Queensland (Australia) schools and reports the results of studies done on those conferencing initiatives. Her survey of the conference process illustrates its use in schools. Thorsborne then comments on restorative justice in the school setting, and she compares positive outcomes from restorative responses with the failure of suspension and exclusion.

Minnesota Department of Children, Families and Learning. Respecting everyone’s ability to resolve problems: Restorative measures.

This booklet applies restorative measures (i.e., a restorative philosophy and process) to deal with school-based conflicts and problems. A restorative measures approach starts from the perspective that a conflict or problem results in harm. Hence, such measures address three sets of needs: the person harmed, the person who caused the harm, and the school community. Restorative measures give school personnel a tool to use with children and youth to repair harm and to teach problem-solving skills. The booklet covers the following areas: principles of restorative measures in schools; implementing restorative measures in a school; restorative measures and violence prevention; and examples of restorative measures in Minnesota.

Wachtel, Ted. SaferSanerSchools: Restoring community in a disconnected world.

Wachtel observes that punishment is often the normal response to misbehavior, and that failure to punish is often considered permissive. This, he argues, constitutes the "punitive-permissive continuum," which he critiques as a limited perspective. In this context, Wachtel construes increasing misbehavior among school students and the related punitive school climate as products of alienation and loss of community in modern society. It is a vicious cycle: misbehavior; (ineffective) punishment; more misbehavior. Wachtel offers an alternative to the punitive-permissive continuum. He calls this the "social discipline window," a perspective composed of both control and support. Through this window we can identify four general approaches to social discipline, depending on their combination of high or low control with high or low support: neglectful; permissive; punitive; and restorative.

Maday, Mike. Kid mediators: Learning and applying conflict resolution skills in schools

Mike Maday helps schools set up conflict resolution and mediation programs. As indicated in the title, he focuses in this article on students mediating conflicts among other students. He describes the student mediator's role, rules for students to follow in order to resolve problems, and basic processes in the mediation. Maday also discusses key components of a curriculum for school peer mediation programs.

Anonymous. Safer Schools Partnerships (SSP's) and Restorative Justice in Schools

The main aims of Safer School Partnerships (SSP's) are : - To reduce the prevalence of crime and victimisation amongst young people and to reduce the number of incidents and crimes in schools and their wider communities - To provide a safe and secure school community which enhances the learning environment - To ensure that young people remain in education, actively learning and achieving their full potential - To engage young people, challenge unacceptable behaviour, and help them develop a respect for themselves and their community. The SSPs currently funded by the Youth Justice Board provide for a Safer School Partnership team working across a family or cluster of schools. In addition to the police officer, the model includes a project worker to enable more specialised work to be undertaken with the pupil and their family/carer, to facilitate the provision of other mainstream services, provide links to the Youth Offending Team (YOT), local police and other relevant agencies. They also include an administrative support post.... The purpose of restorative justice in schools RJiS is to use restorative justice including restorative conferencing and peer mediation to reduce offending, bullying and victimisation in schools and improve school attendance. RJiS enables victims to be satisfied and receive reparation and students who perpetrate harm to understand and take responsibility for putting right the harm they have caused and making reparation. Promising findings suggest that RJ can also substantially reduce school exclusions. Projects in Hammersmith and Fulham have reported that, following 155 restorative conferences involving 290 students, exclusions, mainly fixed term, have been avoided in 190 individual cases. (excerpt)

Drewery, Wendy and Winslade, John. Developing Restorative Practices in Schools: Flavour of the month or saviour of the system?

A team at Waikato completed two projects on restorative conferencing in schools for the Ministry of Education, under the rubric of the Suspension Reduction Initiative. The projects included developing and trialling processes for suspension hearings using restorative conferencing and principles from restorative justice. Objectives of both projects were related to the desire to reduce numbers of suspensions and exclusions, particularly of Maori children. This paper reports on these two projects, and reflects on some of the questions they raised. Authors' abstract.

Murray, Barbara A. Examining School Based Mediation: A Literature Review

This paper reviews the existing literature on school based mediation programs to answer the questions: What is school based mediation and what are the effects of school based mediation? It concludes with a critical analysis of the literature, and recommendations for practice and future research. Schools have been struggling to find solutions to deal with the issue of school violence and student conflicts. Although the literature reveals varying results as to the effects of school based mediation, it has been implemented by a number of schools over the past decade to meet the needs of conflict management for students. The school based mediation model is based on the community mediation model, which does not always take into account the need to have total school support for the program, support systems for student (peer) mediators, or funding for the program. One main obstacle in developing school based mediation programs is using the community mediation model without taking into account the specific needs of the school community... Author's abstract.

Samuels, Fae Ernestine. The Peer Mediation Process in Secondary Schools

The purpose of this study was to investigate the practice and the impact of peer mediation in eight secondary schools. This research is the first to investigate peer mediation in secondary schools. In doing so, it sought to give the peer mediators and other students a "voice." The students explained the peer mediation process, the effects on their personal lives, relationships, school climate and families. The thirty-three participants of the study include eight mediators, two disputants, two non-disputants, six students who refused mediation, seven teachers, one non-teacher and seven administrators. Three students refused to be interviewed. All student participants were eighteen years of age when interviewed. The method employed is qualitative. A personal interview was conducted with each mediator and disputant to investigate what happens during the mediation process, their satisfaction with the process and the impact it is having on them and the school community. Teachers, coordinators of the peer mediation programs and administrators were also interviewed individually to get their perception of the program's impact on the mediators, disputants, other students and the school climate. Data gathered were analysed in four stages. The interviews were transcribed verbatim and the categories and themes were identified and sorted. The findings indicate that peer mediation provides one of the best opportunities for creating peaceful schools. The study is significant because it verifies and brings to the forefront ten issues that are important to the field of peer mediation and conflict resolution. Author's abstract.

Healy, Julie and Gribben, Marie and McCann, Cathy and Gribben, Marie. School Restorative Conferencing: A positive approach to keeping young people in the school community

The primary aim of the School Restorative Conferencing (SRC) scheme, which opened as a pilot in 2000, is to provide a positive approach to school inclusion for all through a restorative justice model.The project works with schools in the Southern Education & Library Board area and is based in Barnardo's Diamond House Centre, Moy, County Tyrone. (excerpt)

McCold, Paul. Evaluation of a Restorative Milieu: Replication and Extension for 2001-2003 Discharges

The Community Service Foundation and Buxmont Academy operate eight school-day treatment programs, 16 residential group homes, a home and community supervision program and an intensive drug-and-alcohol treatment supervision program in southeastern Pennsylvania for adjudicated delinquent and at-risk youths. All of these programs utilize what are broadly termed "restorative practices." This researcher has coined the term "restorative milieu" because the culture comprised of many formal and informal restorative techniques and processes, not just isolated formal restorative justice interventions. This paper reports on the replication and extension of a previous evaluation, with a second wave of 858 day treatment discharges during school years 2001-02 and 2002-03. The original finding of a significant reduction in reoffending for youths participating three months or more in a CSF Buxmont Academy restorative environment was replicated with a new cohort of youths and was still evident for the original cohort at two years following discharge. (excerpt)

Thorsborne, Margaret and Armstrong, Margaret and Moxon, Judith and Armstrong, Margaret. Advancing the restorative agenda into the classroom

Restorative conferencing is no longer new to schools. Increasingly in Australia, New Zealand and in other countries, schools, in an attempt to reverse unhealthy statistics of stand-downs, suspensions and exclusions, have adopted the conference to deal with incidents of serious harm. But education professionals know that most of the "action" occurs in classrooms and that school and class "removal" is better viewed as a process not an event (Skiba et al, 2003). This interactive presentation will briefly explore some models for the successful integration of the restorative philosophy into classroom practice. Divided in to three parts, it will allow participants an insight into current thinking and practice which delivers positive outcomes for teachers, students and their classmates in the wake of wrongdoing. Part 1: School removal and restorative conferencing: This will be a brief overview of the history of restorative conferencing in schools and current research about the risks associated with the overuse of school removal and zero tolerance as disciplinary strategies. Part 2: Restorative Conferencing in Classrooms: This will, using a case study approach, demonstrate the use of classroom conferencing to deal with a variety of difficult classroom dynamics, where young people are made accountable to each other and their teachers, instead of the traditional practice of removing them for referral to deputies, deans or other disciplinarians. This demonstrates the restorative agenda at work in the busiest place in the school - the classroom. Part 3: Responding restoratively to classroom disruption in the moment: This is an exploration of the use of a highly successful restorative adaptation of the Responsible Thinking Programme - a process that may include a student's temporary removal from the classroom. Abstract courtesy of the Centre for Justice and Peace Development, Massey University, http://justpeace.massey.ac.nz.

Hopkins, Belinda. Restorative Approaches in UK Schools

This presentation describes the growing interest in the UK in the development of Restorative Approaches within schools. It discusses the various ways in which this is happening, the evaluations that have occurred to date of these projects and the challenges that lie ahead. Abstract courtesy of the Centre for Justice and Peace Development, Massey University, http://justpeace.massey.ac.nz.