Restorative Justice and Practice in School Settings: Tricky Dilemmas and Creative Possibilities

Introduction

Complexities and challenges involved in navigating shifts towards restorative justice practices (RJP) and cultures in school settings are well established (Cremin et al., 2012; Darling and Monk, 2018; Vaandering, 2018). RJP is a values-based approach that aims to consciously build meaningful relationships and respond to harm and conflict in organisational settings. It draws on the principles and practices of what is more commonly known as Restorative Justice (RJ), adapting them to school situations and puts repairing harm done to relationships and people over and above the need for assigning blame and dispensing punishment (Hopkins, 2006). RJP has gained significant traction in the Irish education system within the past decade or so, but in countries where is it more established such as the US, Canada and Australia, school systems and personnel have acknowledged the difficulties in implementing restorative justice practices in classrooms and schools (Darling & Monk, 2018). Cremin, Sellman and McCluskey just a decade ago neatly captured the challenges and “the tricky question of how to bring about changes in institutional behaviour that is rooted in punitive and retributive ways of thinking” (2012, p.430).

This chapter addresses the tricky dilemma associated with implementing RJP in school settings through the lens of a single site case study. It charts the journey of a collaborative Community of Practice (CoP) in a large disadvantaged Irish post-primary school in Ireland who sought to implement RJP. The chapter begins by contextualising RJP in the context of Irish post-primary education. It notes several historically embedded pedagogic traditions which cultivated unhealthy and oppressive habits of compliance, and conformity inside Irish classrooms. Presenting this background history establishes a baseline for the challenges presented in the case study. From there the chapter proceeds to situate these challenges within a range of international studies. Methodological and conceptual approaches in addition to guiding values are then treated before the case study is presented. The chapter concludes with a discussion on key insights relevant to the implementation of RJP in post-primary schools.