The Significance of Perspectives on Harm for Safe and Caring School Initiatives

• In Event: Issues and Interventions in School Safety

Abstract

Early research indicates that schools implementing restorative justice practices experience reduced numbers of suspensions, expulsions, and office referrals but also have potential for significantly impacting school culture. However, research also indicates that institutional structures and school participants can use restorative justice so it perpetuates rule-based culture rather than the relationship-based culture it seeks to nurture. Given that repairing harm is central to the approach, this research set out to explore how students’, educators’, and administrators' perspectives of harm and their school’s response to harm might inform the theory, implementation and practice of restorative justice in schools. The results emerging are significant not only for restorative justice, but also for the implementation and sustainability of other safe and caring school initiatives.

Author

• Dorothy Vaandering, Memorial University