Association for Public Policy Analysis & Management

Reducing the use of suspension and other exclusionary punishments is becoming an increasing focus of educational leaders, and policy researchers across the nation. Restorative justice practices (RJP) are one promising alternative for addressing school discipline and improving school climate. However, implementing RJP in a high-quality, sustainable way has proven to be a persistent challenge.

Like any educational policy, the implementation of RJP is highly dependent on front line educators to interpret the reform. Because restorative justice practices represent a fundamental philosophical break with zero-tolerance style exclusionary discipline, they are perhaps especially susceptible to misinterpretation. However, little research has been conducted to date on the perspectives of the educators tasked with implementing RJP to guide school- or district-level professional development and roll out.

In this study, part of a larger project on school RJP implementation, I identify educators’ constellations of conceptions about discipline and restorative justice. Data for the study come from a set of semi-structured interviews with educators and restorative justice professionals working in three urban public high schools, each implementing restorative justice practices to differing degrees. Participants represent a wide range of teaching experience, subject-matter expertise, and role in the school. The final sample includes interviews with 80 educators. Interviews were iteratively coded for conceptions of zero tolerance and restorative justice practices, beginning with a representative sub-sample of 9 interviewees, and then extended to the larger sample.

Preliminary findings suggest, first, that many educators, including those who are supportive of reducing schools’ reliance on exclusionary discipline, and who have received multiple sessions of formal RJP training, retain substantially incomplete notions of what RJP entail. RJP professionals and central office staff consistently reference several formal practices falling under the restorative umbrella plus several principles that can be applied to a broad range of school practices and situations. However, school administrators, teachers and security staff frequently attend to processual elements of specific RJP practices while missing important principles that undergird them.

Second, preliminary findings identify two sources from which these misapprehensions about the nature of RJP seem to stem. One is transformations in common usage of the practices themselves over time. Some schools in the district adopted RJP almost 20 years ago, but in a substantially different form. In emphasizing continuity with older practices, RJP advocates may have unintentionally undercut the clarity of the policy. Another obstacle lies in conflicts between RJP’s underlying philosophy and educators’ habitual heuristics of action. In selecting a response to a students’ misbehavior, educators seem to rely less on explicit reasoning about outcomes and more on a set of go-to strategies. While experienced educators may have very subtle and sensitive (partially tacit) algorithms for selecting among these strategies, typical professional development approaches do little to integrate RJP into this cognitive system.

Building on these findings, I offer implications for messaging, needs assessment, and professional development around continued RJP roll out.