Restorative
Justice in a School or School District:
Using
Restorative Practices to Support a Culture of Care
Professional
Development Training Proposal
Executive Summary
This proposal is based
on the idea that restorative justice practices can be used in schools,
particularly in classrooms, to help create a culture of care. In the field of a
culture of care, research shows that there needs to be a sense of school
connectedness and caring and nurturing relationships between the teachers and
the students so that there can be an increase in the students’ positive
experiences of schooling and a movement away from zero-tolerance punishment
strategies.[1]
I propose
that up to 25 educators from a school or school district be invited to
participate in Restorative Justice in
Schools: Using Restorative Practices to Support a Culture of Care
professional development training. This training consists of 16 modules. Each
module would last 1.5 hours for a total of 24 hours of professional development
training. Generally this training is offered over four consecutive days. This
training will be facilitated as a training-the-trainers professional
development training.
Participants
will be asked to successfully complete the following 16 modules constituting
that training. Following is a list of each module, a brief explanation of the
content, and the research that supports the module. Also attached as Appendix A
is the pedagogical model for the training.
1. Relationships - Importance
of relationships in Restorative Justice and Culture of Care.
Berryman, M., Macfarlane,
S. & Cavanagh, T. (2009). Indigenous contexts for responding to
challenging behaviours: Contrasting Western accountability and Maori
restoration of harmony. International Journal of
Restorative Justice, 5(1), 1-32.
2. Basic principles –
Restorative basics: It’s about attitude, doing school “with” students,
inclusive relationships across the school, teachers positioning and theorizing;
involving all staff.
Cavanagh, T. (2008).
Schooling for happiness: Rethinking the aims of education. Kairaranga, 9(1).
20-23.
3. Collegial relationships – Collegial
relationships at work: Restorative tools are used to build and maintain a
healthy community among leaders and staff.
Cavanagh, T. (2007). Focusing on
relationships creates safety in schools. set: Research Information for
Teachers, 1. 31-35.
4. Teacher-student relationships –
Restorative tools are used to build and maintain a healthy classroom community
among teachers and students.
Cavanagh, T., Macfarlane, A., Glynn, T,
and Macfarlane, S. (2010). Creating peaceful and effective schools through a
continuity of caring relationships. A paper presented for the
Peace Education Special Interest Group (SIG), Expanding the Vision, Theory, and Practice
of Peace Education in Diverse Contexts session, at the American Educational
Research Association Annual Meeting, Denver, Colorado.
5. Building capacity –
Restorative language and conversations: Simple, non-adversarial,
problem-solving conversations.
Cavanagh, T. (2009). Restorative
practices in schools: Breaking the cycle of student involvement in child
welfare and legal systems. Protecting Children, 24(4). 53-60.
6. Restorative conversations – Simple, non-adversarial, problem-solving conversations.
Cavanagh, T. (2009).
Creating schools of peace and nonviolence in a time of war and violence. Journal
of School Violence, 8(1). 64-80.
7. Community circles - A semi-formal tool to help teachers and
students build connectedness and cooperation.
Cavanagh, T. (2009). Creating a new
discourse of peace in schools: Restorative justice in education. Journal for
Peace and Justice Studies, special issue on Restorative Justice,
18(1&2), 62-84.
8. Restorative circles - A semi-formal tool to help teachers and
students respond to wrongdoing and conflict as a group.
Cavanagh, T., Gaebler, F., &
Zimmerman, T. (2008). Creating and maintaining a peaceful environment in
elementary schools. Retrieved from http://www.educatingforpeace.cahs.colostate.edu.
9. Pre-conference –
Pre-conference: Prepare students, staff, and parents so everyone knows the
story of what happened before the conference, and they know the conference
format.
10. Conference –
Restorative conferences: Formal conferences to address specific incidents of
serious harm; facilitated by trained people.
11. Agreement –
Agreement: Specific plans to put right the harm that’s been done, including
personalized ways for students to learn new skills/attitudes to avoid future
trouble; allows for easy monitoring and follow up.
12. Classroom conference circles –
Classroom-conference circles: Structured problem solving circles for large
group of students and their teachers.
13. Brief restorative conversations for
administrators, deans, and counselors – Brief restorative interventions:
Referral-based problem solving tools for administrators, deans, and counselors.
Cavanagh, T. (2012). Building the
capacity of students to be peaceful citizens by implementing a culture of care
in schools. A paper presented at the Policy to Arts, Engaging K-12 Students
in Peace Education Roundtable Session, hosted by the Peace Education Special
Interest Group (SIG), at the American Educational Research Association (AERA)
Annual Meeting in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada, April 13, 2012.
14. Brief restorative interventions for
teachers and students – Brief restorative interventions: Problem
solving tools for teachers and students.
Cavanagh, T. (2003). Schooling for Peace: Caring
for our Children in School. Experiments in Education, 31(8). 139-143.
15. Culturally sustainable restorative practices – Using
Restorative Justice principles of building and maintaining relationships and
exercising holistic care to create a Culture of Care.
Cavanagh, T., Macfarlane, A., Glynn, T.
& Macfarlane, S. (2012). Creating peaceful and effective schools through a
culture of care. Discourse, 33(3).
16. Action plan – Using
the process of Appreciative Inquiry, what steps could we take to move from
where we are to where we could ideally be in creating a Culture of Care based
on Restorative practices?
Patton, M. Q. (2003). Inquiry into appreciative evaluation. New Directions for Evaluation, 100 (Winter).
Participants
will leave the training with the knowledge, skills, and resources to implement
what is learned and also to teach others about what they have learned. In that
way a professional learning community will be created in the Dinuba Unified
School District focused on implementing restorative justice practices in
classrooms in an effort to create a culture of care in schools throughout the
school district.
Appendix A
Pedagogical model for Restorative Justice training
The model for
facilitating this professional development training is the “wheel of learning,”
created by Dr. Peter Senge and his colleagues in The Fifth Discipline Fieldbook.
This method includes the process of reflecting, connecting, deciding,
and doing. The four areas constitute the
different learning styles of adult learners.
The result of using this model is to reach each participant’s learning
style.
The
reflecting stage gives the
participant an overview and a big picture of what is to be learned. Participants can then reflect on what this
means to them. In this stage the
facilitator’s role is to motivate the learners to want to learn. The learners may be utilizing personal
reflections, writing, drawing, and discussion.
The
connecting stage of the process is
the content area. Learners are given the
information pertinent to what is to be learned.
This step reflects traditional classroom learning. In this stage the facilitator is the giver of
information. The participants are involved in analyzing, clarifying, reasoning,
connecting, and defining.
In
the deciding stage the learners are
involved with a hands-on activity to apply what they learned. The instructor assumes the role of coach and
facilitator in this step. The
participants engage in demonstrating, field testing, and experimenting.
The
doing stage involves implementing
the learning into daily life. The
learners are encouraged to apply their learning and report the results back
later, at which time the “wheel of learning” will begin over. The facilitator assumes the role of evaluator
and remediator in this stage. The
participants are engaged in creating, sharing, implementing, and collaborating.
Senge, P.M., Kleiner, A., Roberts, C., Ross, R. & Smith,
B. (1994). The fifth discipline
fieldbook: Strategies and tools for building a learning organization. New
York, NY: Currency.
[1] Cavanagh
(2009). Creating a new discourse of peace in schools: Restorative justice in
education. Journal for Peace and Justice
Studies, special issue on Restorative Justice, 18(1&2), 62-84.
