The Toolkit Before the Toolkit: Centering Adaptive and Relational Elements of Restorative Practices for Implementation Success
Restorative practices are characterized by proactive relationships, connection, and community transformation. When implemented correctly, restorative practices are not more to do but a different way to be.
This guide highlights the mindsets, values, social capital, and structural supports that bind and hold together restorative practices.
Educators, school leaders, and district administrators can use this practical guide to successfully implement restorative practices and transform their schools into strong communities with meaningful relationships, a sense of authentic belonging, and equitable whole-person outcomes.
Accompanying Resources
Brief: A Reflective Process for Working Through Complex Restorative Practice Dilemmas in Schools
This brief offers a reflective process for individuals and teams to use when facing a complex restorative practices dilemma at their school or district. It aims to help educators consider and bridge the adaptive, relational, and structural elements of restorative practices before moving to technical solutions and strategies.
Audiocast: Centering Adaptive and Relational Elements of Restorative Practices as Tools for Implementation Success
Lauren Trout, the toolkit’s author, and Dr. Angela Ward from Transforming Education, discuss restorative practices as a paradigm and the necessary conditions for implementing with fidelity and sustainability.
Audiocast: Restorative Practitioners Panel
Lauren Trout, the toolkit’s author, speaks with four practitioners who have used the Toolkit in their education practice. The group discusses their work and their insights about restorative practices in the field of education.
Restorative Ways of Being to Embody What Is Possible: A Guide for Restorative Leaders
Educators and leaders looking to embrace restorative practices in educational settings must navigate countless decisions without simple or easily identifiable answers, and they must do so in a context that tends to be at odds with restorative values and principles. To help restorative practitioners navigate such challenging complexity, this guide frames restorative practices not as a program but as a paradigm, supporting a shift from asking “What is the right answer?” to instead asking “What are the steps I will try first?” and “How can I center my own and others’ humanity as I decide what to try?”
The guide offers insights into adopting a restorative paradigm by exploring five restorative ways of being that can guide decision-making in difficult situations: looking within oneself, getting to the root causes of incidents, holding complexity rather than seeking simple solutions, keeping dignity intact, and staying proximate to those most affected.
After the five ways of being are described, four fictional scenarios highlight common implementation challenges for restorative practitioners. Each scenario is followed by reflective questions that encourage readers to engage with the restorative ways of being in ways that can inform day-to-day decision-making and interactions. The guide also provides protocols to support implementation.
Restorative Justice in U.S. Schools: An Updated Research Review
This report summarizes information from a comprehensive review of the literature on restorative justice in U.S. schools. It updates and expands an earlier review on this subject, published by WestEd in 2016, and covers literature that was published or made publicly available between 1999 and mid-2018. The review captures key issues, describes models of restorative justice, and summarizes results from studies conducted in the field.
Restorative justice is a broad term and is used in this report to capture what the literature describes using a variety of terms, including “restorative practices,” “restorative approaches,” and similar language. The report describes restorative justice as encompassing “a growing social movement to institutionalize non-punitive, relationship-centered approaches for avoiding and addressing harm, responding to violations of legal and human rights, and collaboratively solving problems.”
This updated review was developed with funding from Robert Wood Johnson Foundation as part of a larger effort of the WestEd Justice & Prevention Research Center (JPRC) to document the current breadth of evidence on restorative justice, provide a more comprehensive picture of how restorative practices are implemented in schools, and lay the groundwork for future research, implementation, and policy.
Restorative Justice in U.S. Schools: A Research Review
This report provides a comprehensive review of the literature on restorative justice in U.S. schools. The review captures key issues, describes models of restorative justice, and summarizes results from studies conducted in the field.
The review was conducted on research reports and other relevant literature published, or made publicly available, between 1999 and mid-2014 and was guided by the following questions:
- What are the origins and theory underlying U.S. schools’ interest in restorative justice?
- How does the literature describe restorative justice programs or approaches in U.S. schools?
- What issues have been identified as important to consider for implementing restorative justice in the schools?
- What does the empirical research say about the impact of restorative justice in the schools?
In the literature reviewed for this report, restorative justice is generally portrayed as a promising approach to address school climate, culture, and safety. Although the community of support for its implementation has grown exponentially over the past several years, more research is needed.
Several rigorous trials underway will perhaps provide the evidence necessary to make stronger claims about the impact of restorative justice, and the field will benefit greatly as those results become available over the next several years.
Restorative Justice in Schools
In this archived webinar, WestEd’s Anthony Petrosino and Sarah Guckenburg describe their research on restorative justice, a non-punitive approach for dealing with conflict that’s transforming the disciplinary approaches in a growing number of schools.
Petrosino and Guckenburg conducted interviews in the field, surveyed practitioners nationwide, and conducted a comprehensive literature review on restorative justice practices in the United States. Their research goals were to learn about current practices, essential elements of implementation, and provide recommendations for future research on restorative justice in K–12 settings.
Sam Garrison, Principal at Camden Street Renew School in Newark, New Jersey, describes how administrators and teachers are using restorative justice at their elementary school site, and the impact on student outcomes.
What You Learn
- The research on how restorative justice is being used in U.S. schools
- Challenges to implementing restorative justice in K–12 educational settings
- The impact of restorative justice at an elementary school site in New Jersey
Who Benefits
- School district superintendents and administrators
- Principals and site administrators
- Teachers, behavior specialists, intervention coordinators
- School board members and parent leaders
- Researchers and grantmakers
This webinar was co-sponsored by the Region IX Equity Assistance Center at WestEd and the Equity Assistance Center Region II.
Restorative Justice in Schools: Highlights of Research and Practice in the U.S. (Encore Presentation)
In this archived webinar, WestEd’s Anthony Petrosino and Sarah Guckenburg describe their research on restorative justice, a non-punitive approach for dealing with conflict that’s transforming the disciplinary approaches in a growing number of schools.
Petrosino and Guckenburg conducted interviews in the field, surveyed practitioners nationwide, and conducted a comprehensive literature review on restorative justice practices in the United States. Their research goals were to learn about current practices, essential elements of implementation, and provide recommendations for future research on restorative justice in K–12 settings.
Sam Garrison, Principal of the Camden Street Renew School in Newark, New Jersey, discusses the work of administrators and teachers in using restorative justice at his elementary school site, and the impact on student outcomes.
What You Will Learn
- The research on how restorative justice is being used in U.S. schools
- Challenges to implementing restorative justice in K-12 education settings
- The impact of restorative justice at an elementary school site in New Jersey
Who Will Benefit
- School district superintendents and administrators
- Principals and site administrators
- Teachers, behavior specialists, intervention coordinators
- School board members and parent leaders
- Researchers and grantmakers
This webinar was sponsored by the Region IX Equity Assistance Center at WestEd and the Region II Equity Assistance Center.
What Further Research is Needed on Restorative Justice in Schools?
Restorative justice is a non-punitive approach to resolving conflict that focuses on restoring relationships.
This report summarizes recommendations about future research and evaluation needs that would advance the understanding of restorative justice in K–12 schools in the United States.
The recommendations were generated from interviews with over 40 nationally recognized leaders in restorative justice, supplemented by a large focus group discussion, and cover:
- Implementation readiness
- Whole-school versus stand-alone models
- Implementation and effectiveness
- Impacts on racial and ethnic minorities and students with disabilities
- Leadership/training
- Data and measurement
Also included in the report is a starter set of research questions that can be considered by foundations, the federal government, and the research community to begin building a strong body of empirical evidence about restorative justice in schools.
Can Restorative Practices Bridge Racial Disparities in Schools? Evidence from the California Healthy Kids Survey
In California, Black students have markedly lower academic achievement than their White peers and Black students are also more likely to experience exclusionary discipline, such as suspensions (Cano, 2020, Losen & Martinez, 2020). What can be done to mitigate these racial disparities in schools?
In this brief, we investigate whether increasing student exposure to restorative practices could help reduce racial discipline and achievement gaps, with a review of a large sample of secondary students who completed the California Healthy Kids Survey between the 2013/14 and 2018/19 school years.
The analysis found that, across racial groups, students who had larger exposure to restorative practices saw less exposure to exclusionary discipline and better academic outcomes. Models also suggested that expanding restorative practices could bridge Black-White discipline disparities.
A Reflective Process for Working Through Complex Restorative Practice Dilemmas in Schools
Designed to accompany The Toolkit Before the Toolkit (Trout, 2021), this brief offers a reflective process for individuals and teams to use when facing a complex restorative practices dilemma at their school or district.
It aims to help educators consider and bridge the adaptive, relational, and structural elements of restorative practices before moving to technical solutions and strategies.
The brief provides:
- An overview of restorative practices
- Grounding research about using a reflective process to transform mindsets and systems
- Tips for applying this process in participants’ own contexts
- Description of the main steps of the process, weaving in a fictional scenario to model the process in action
Restorative Justice in U.S. Schools: Summary Findings from Interviews with Experts
Current methods of responding to student offenses in schools are often not effective, and may even be backfiring. Many experts support the use of restorative justice (RJ), an approach to justice that focuses on repairing harm and restoring relationships, rather than simply punishing the perpetrator.
This new report, funded by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, describes the promise of RJ in improving relationships and the overall school environment, and summarizes the findings from interviews with over 40 nationally recognized RJ leaders.
Written by researchers from the WestEd Justice & Prevention Research Center, the report explores:
- Current work related to RJ in schools
- Defining RJ in schools
- Key practices of RJ in schools
- Successes and challenges of implementing RJ in schools
- Suggestions for future research on RJ in schools
The experts agreed that RJ can help address some major challenges schools face, such as disproportionality among discipline referrals and the zero-tolerance policies that contribute to a school-to-prison pipeline.
In addition, the experts supported the need for further rigorous research in the field to determine the full impact of RJ in schools.
