Restorative Approaches to Conflict in Schools

Interdisciplinary perspectives on whole school approaches to managing relationships

Edward Sellman, Hilary Cremin, Gillean McCluskey

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2013
• ISBN:
  9781134514663
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Education General

Drawing on recent international developments in criminal justice, Restorative Approaches to Conflict in Schools highlights the long-term ineffectiveness of punitive models of discipline in education contexts and examines an alternative approach, underpinned by the principles of restorative justice. This approach provides an opportunity for adults and young people to engage with a range of processes such as group conferencing and peer mediation, whereby:

• conflict and harm are confronted and repaired;
• a future rather than past orientation is developed;
• relationships are built upon the values and attitudes of respect, inclusion and equality;
• pupils learn inter-personal and problem solving skills as well as social responsibility;
• staff develop skills and confidence in working restoratively;
• the risk of future/repeat problems is minimised; and
• a positive school ethos is developed.

These approaches have proven to be highly effective in criminal justice systems around the world, and are beginning to be applied more widely in educational contexts. This edited volume draws together for the first time contributions from an interdisciplinary field of international experts and practitioners on the subject, and offers both critique and guidance in order that the implementation of restorative approaches in schools may be undertaken thoughtfully and sustainably. This exciting new text will be a key reference book for locating contemporary, international and inter-disciplinary debate in the field.

Chapter 1

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Contextualised, contested
and catalytic

A thematic introduction to the potential
of restorative approaches in schools

Edward Sellman, Hilary Cremin and Gillean McCluskey

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Introduction

This edited book addresses the ways in which educational settings and their communities can best encourage and promote positive behaviour and relationships. It examines the potential of restorative approaches in schools as an alternative to the proliferation of policies and practices recommending punitive and zero tolerance responses to ‘misconduct’, which growing evidence indicates is ineffective in the long-term (Skiba et al. 2008).

Restorative approaches are closely related to restorative justice, with the latter referring to a process used in the criminal and youth justice sectors where harm has been caused. It involves an impartial third party facilitating a process whereby an ‘offender’ (or ‘wrong-doer’) is held accountable and makes some form of reparation to his or her ‘victim’. The victim is placed at the centre of the process, and is given the opportunity to express the ways in which s/he has been affected and to ask questions about the offence (typically – ‘Why me?’, ‘Am I safe?’). Some cases eventually involve a face-to-face meeting, although it is also common for parties to choose shuttle mediation. It has been positively evaluated, and shown to be very effective in diverting young people from crime and reducing re-offending (Sherman and Strang 2007).

In educational and care settings, restorative approaches have been advocated by many as a means of bringing young people in conflict together, to undertake a deeper enquiry of the incident, including who has been affected and who is obliged to make amends, before agreeing their own long-term solution to the problem. A range of processes (e.g. mediation, conferencing) are used to encourage reflection and seeking answers to questions like: What happened? Who has been affected? What were you feeling at the time, and now? How is the other person feeling? What can you do, if applicable, to put things right? It has been seen as an effective complement to behaviour management strategies in schools, and may well contribute to more inclusive and harmonious school cultures (Cremin 2007, Hendry 2009, Hopkins 2004, McCluskey et al. 2008, Sellman 2011). Research carried out by Skinns et al. (2009) has shown that it can have a positive impact on pupils who are confronted with the consequences of their actions for the first time. It can provide new insights for teachers into the complexities of bullying and conflict between peers and enhanced feelings of empowerment, emotional literacy, and respect amongst teachers and pupils. It has also been shown to improve the quality of relationships, and to restore friendships, or enable young people to simply learn to live with each other (McCluskey et al. 2008).

This book will pool together, for the first time in an edited volume, a range of perspectives from international and interdisciplinary theory and practice on restorative approaches to conflict in schools. It draws together the work of key international academics and practitioners who have implemented restorative approaches in educational settings and have lessons to share or questions to raise. Many of these chapters emerged from a seminal and highly successful seminar series, Restorative Approaches to conflict Resolution in Schools, organised by the editors and funded by the Economic and Social Research Council in the UK (see Cremin et al. 2012). This took place between 2010 and 2011, hosted initially at the House of Lords, London, then at the Universities of Cambridge, Edinburgh and Nottingham. The contributions to this book drew on this seminar and upon perspectives from the academic disciplines of education, criminology, law, human rights, philosophy, psychology, psychotherapy, sociology and social policy to examine the nature and potential of restorative approaches in schools.

The book has three main moves, which relate to the thematic structure of the book. In the first section, restorative approaches will be positioned as highly contextualised. It will share practice and insights from around the globe, examine the disciplinary impact of various fields upon assumptions, definitions and implications for practice and show how behaviour in schools is deeply rooted in social, cultural and institutional contexts. The contested nature of restorative approaches will be examined in the second section, debating the assumptions, aims, terminology and implications of applying restorative principles, themselves diverse in origin, in educational settings. The third section addresses the catalytic, or transformative, nature of restorative approaches in schools. It will question whether transformative practice is achievable in educational contexts and share the learning of researchers and practitioners who have successfully implemented restorative approaches. All of the sections will raise critical questions for theory and practice. These include:

• What are the merits and limitations of various ways of conceptualising restorative approaches?

• How do cultural and environmental factors influence understanding of restorative approaches in schools?

• To what degree do different moral and ethical values, and accepted norms and practices, in different academic disciplines, policy and practice contexts impact upon the implementation of restorative approaches?

• What is the relationship between retributive and restorative approaches to conflict and justice in different academic disciplines and policy contexts, and their implications for schools?

• To what extent can/should restorative approaches be voluntary, non-directive and non-judgemental?

• What is it about the socio-political context of schools that makes it challenging/ possible for restorative approaches to become embedded and effective?

• How can restorative approaches be sustainable within current and future educational policy and practice contexts internationally?

There will be several issues that overlap this thematic structure and are hence examined throughout the text. Here follows a brief introduction to each theme and an overview of the chapters contained within each section.

Contextualised

Howard Zehr – a genuine pioneer in the field – has made it clear that restorative justice is not a particular programme or a blueprint. Whilst it can be seen as a compass pointing in a direction, there is no pure model that can be seen as ideal or that can be simply implemented in any community. Writing in 2002, he noted that:

The most exciting practices that have emerged in the past years were not even imagined by those of us who began the first programmes, and many more new ideas will surely emerge through dialogue and experimentation. Also, all models are to some extent culture-bound. So restorative justice should be built from the bottom up, by communities, in dialogue assessing their needs and resources and applying the principles to their own situations.

(Zehr 2002, p. 10)

He values a context-oriented approach that emerges from debate and takes account of local needs and traditions. He is cautious about top-down strategies for implementing restorative justice. In the light of this, the first section of the book takes context as its central organising factor.

Restorative approaches in schools draw upon recent international developments in criminal justice but also upon lessons learned through the study of indigenous communities and the work of truth and reconciliation commissions in post-conflict societies. Lucio Sia begins this section by providing an international overview of how the United Nations and its agencies have applied restorative approaches around the world. He emphasises the contextual nature of the examples included by sharing how policy, legislation, culture and language frame both conflict and its response. This chapter also introduces some key terminology, useful for the rest of the book. The journey of restorative approaches from criminal justice to education is then charted by Judge David Carruthers, who draws upon seminal work in New Zealand to untangle some of the issues concerning the application of principles from one field to another. This chapter is then complemented by Dan Van Ness, who traces the roots of restorative approaches back further to spiritual and tribal communities. In so doing, he argues for a communitarian view with implications for those wishing to inaugurate restorative approaches in schools. He argues the need to move away from an instrumental conceptualisation of intervention, which focuses on programmes and techniques, to greater attention to the cultural nature of institutions, a recurring theme throughout the book.

Three chapters follow by Wendy Drewery, Mirriam Lephalala and Derick Wilson, who discuss restorative approaches in schools from New Zealand, South Africa and Northern Ireland respectively. Drewery's historical analysis of the case for restorative approaches in New Zealand schools raises questions about the relationship between the disciplinary and educative functions of schools. Lephalala discusses ‘Ubuntu’, a term originating from the Bantu languages of southern Africa that is used for a traditional and time-tested process for resolving conflict in South Africa. She argues that the introduction of Ubuntu and restorative approaches challenge punitive models of discipline in schools. Wilson discusses the broader role of citizenship education as a means of developing trust and understanding for a more secure future in Northern Ireland – a society deeply affected by ethnic and religious conflict in the past.

Two further chapters by Helen Cowie and Carol Hayden, reflect on restorative approaches in schools and care homes. Cowie draws upon psychological perspectives to highlight the positive impact restorative approaches can have in schools but emphasises that such impact is augmented by all members of a peer group playing a role. Finally, Hayden compares the implementation of restorative approaches in educational settings and care homes, discussing the transferability of such approaches from context to context, particularly those also under performance management pressures.

Contested

From a theoretical perspective, restorative justice is essentially a contested concept (Acorn 2004, Cremin et al. 2012). It is unlikely that there will ever be one agreed definition. Some theorists have seen the different approaches and practices of restorative justice as forming a continuum (Zehr 2002), whilst others have grouped them into different categories (Johnstone and Van Ness 2007).

Some argue that restorative approaches are beneficial whilst others argue that they can cause harm (e.g. Acorn 2004). Most recognise that much depends on context and on the ways in which it is used (Cremin et al. 2012). Several questions present themselves. For example, to what extent are young offenders, or pupils in schools (or their workers and teachers) ‘empowered’ in any aspect of the judicial process or in processes of schooling? What is meant by the empowerment of the young, the poor and the dispossessed when it comes to the dispensation of ‘their’ crimes or misdemeanours? Are restorative approaches appropriate when there is a case for transforming the antecedents of the conflict? To what extent can adults in youth offending settings and schools – responsible for the safety, well-being, and educational achievement of large numbers of young people – facilitate in a neutral, non-judgemental and non-directive way? Is it possible for strategies in educational settings that are proactive and preventative to be classed as restorative? And perhaps most significantly, what precisely is being restored?

James MacAllister begins this section by arguing from a philosophical perspective that some present-day attempts to formulate a concept of restorative justice are logically paradoxical. He questions whether ‘transformative restoration’ is possible, and whether proactive restoration is a useful concept. He draws this together by arguing that advocates of restorative approaches might be well advised to make modest and specific claims about what is distinctive about the contribution of restorative approaches in schools. Hilary Cremin and Brenda Morrison both argue from a social psychological point of view that restorative approaches can cause harm if they attribute misconduct with ‘deficient’ individuals rather than with the socio-cultural and economic factors that create the conditions of crime, cultural resistance and poverty. There is a real danger of pathologising and criminalising the poor and the dispossessed if, as Van Ness argues in the previous section, restorative procedures and processes are taken off the shelf, rather than embraced in the full spirit of their indigenous and spiritual roots.

Finally, Gillean McCluskey argues that restorative approaches offer the opportunity for a radical re-imagining of the relationship between teachers and students in schools, but that this brings significant challenges to school structures that are often deeply conventional and resistant to innovation, a theme revisited in the final section of chapters. McCluskey et al. then conclude this section with a reflection on research approaches that are congruent with restorative values. They question to what extent evaluation, which is positioned ‘inside’ pilot projects and owned by stakeholders, can be of value to others wanting more standardised research methods and findings? Indeed, are standardised approaches appropriate to evaluate restorative practices at all?

Catalytic?

The final section considers the ways in which restorative approaches provide a catalyst for change or whether such change is necessary before restorative approaches can be implemented (Hopkins 2004). The section begins with a discussion by David and Roger Johnson, who argue that restorative approaches such as peer mediation must be complemented by everyday educational experiences of cooperative learning and constructive controversy in order to augment their impact and prepare young people with the necessary skills to resolve conflict both now, and as adults. This theme is further developed by Kathy Bickmore, who explains how restorative approaches ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Table of Contents
• List of figures and boxes
• Contributors
• About the editors
• Praise for the book
• Foreword
• Acknowledgements
• List of abbreviations
• 1 Contextualised, contested and catalytic: A thematic introduction to the potential of restorative approaches in schools
• Part I Contextualised
• Part II Contested
• Part III Catalytic?
• Pamphlet text: Restorative approaches in schools
• Index