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 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.
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 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 Practices Beyond the Classroom: Integrating Circle Practices Into Existing School Processes
This brief produced by the California Center for School Climate (CCSC) describes the need and rationale for expanding the use of restorative practices in contexts outside of the classroom.
Practical suggestions are outlined for incorporating these practices into existing school processes, which include IEP/504 meetings, staff meetings, committee meetings, and online spaces.
These non-classroom spaces provide an opportunity for school leaders to model and teach the practices as well as build community among staff members. A short vignette at Ross Elementary provides an example of the material benefits of taking this approach to restorative practices implementation.
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
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.
The Association Between Teachers’ Use of Formative Assessment Practices and Students’ Use of Self-Regulated Learning Strategies
In Spring 2019, this REL West study surveyed teachers and students in grades 3–12 in three Arizona districts to better understand the association between teachers’ use of formative assessment practices and students’ use of self-regulated learning strategies. Formative assessment is a set of practices that enable teachers and students to examine how learning is progressing throughout a lesson or related series of lessons, so that teaching and learning activities can be adjusted as needed. Self-regulated learning is a proactive process in which students select an appropriate learning strategy to advance their learning goals.
The survey results indicated:
- Teachers frequently gave students feedback but less frequently provided occasions for students to provide feedback to one another
- Responding students frequently tracked their own progress but less frequently solicited feedback from their teacher or peers.
- Only a small positive association was found between the frequency of teachers’ formative assessment practices and the average number of self-regulated learning strategies that their students used.
- Some of teachers’ least frequently used formative assessment practices—facilitating student peer feedback and self-assessment—had stronger positive associations with the average number of self-regulated learning strategies that their students used than other, more frequently used practices. The more frequently that teachers reported using these practices, the more self-regulated learning strategies their students reported using.
The study findings can help school district leaders in Arizona and elsewhere decide how to systematically roll out formative assessment–centered professional learning opportunities for teachers. The findings could also inform decisions on whether certain formative assessment practices might be more or less emphasized in research or support efforts moving forward—for example, guiding teachers in different grade spans or subject areas toward different formative assessment practices or implementing related trainings schoolwide.
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.
