Psychosocial Analyses and Actions for Promoting Restorative Schools: Indigenous Determinants Connecting Three International Sites

Abstract

Changing demographic patterns around the world are posing new challenges to the constructions of being, belonging, and identity, demanding a deeper insight into the dynamics that test the resolve of people to coexist more amicably. For school communities this means adopting a stance that positions students and teachers within a safe and enabling educational environment. How disciplinary protocols are embedded and enacted within these environments is critical to how coexistence is manifested. Very often authoritarian disciplinary sanctions are operationalized with spontaneity and are seen as a preferred “quick fix” for student behaviors that are deemed unacceptable. However, a growing body of evidence indicates that such courses of action can seriously hamper, rather than improve, a student’s sense of being, belonging, and identity – by negatively impacting on their attitude, behavior, and performance. These long-term ramifications appear to be experienced in disproportionate numbers by students who are from minoritized ethnic groups and who may interpret these misconceptions as rejection of themselves or their ethnic group, often creating a self-fulfilling belief that their membership belongs somewhere else. Drawing on findings from three research projects located in three different parts of the world, this chapter describes how restorative responses to challenging behavior, when instantiated skillfully and with integrity, have the potential to bring about positive life-course changes. Common themes that underscore an approach that is used in all three settings are highlighted, linking several underlying constructs back to the key theoretical frameworks which inform them. The chapter ultimately illustrates how these frameworks have been actualized in school and community settings and points to Indigenous insights as being key determinants that drive the measures that are built into these frameworks. It is proposed that conventional approaches to responding to challenging behaviors regularly fail to meet the relational needs of learning and teaching in twenty-first-century schools. Increasingly, schools are searching for alternatives that work. To that end, they are finding restorative approaches more effective in establishing long-term, lasting changes in relationships, more connectivity among members of a school community, more inclusiveness of a range of voices, and more enhancement of ethics of care within school communities as a whole. Responding to these opportunities requires educators to reach beyond the auspices of conventional education protocols, toward more innovative perspectives that promote broader social justice and equity within policies and practices. This chapter illustrates synergies across different geographic and cultural locations and brings attention to particular pedagogical practices which, even in widely diverse settings, are collectively associated with positive outcomes.