A Restorative Approach to Civic Learning in Canada

• In Event: Roundtable Session 2
  In Roundtable Session: Restorative Approaches for Education: “Right” Relationships in Curriculum, Classrooms, and School Cultures

Abstract

Researchers have found that the current state of civic learning is characterized by procedural knowledge of governance and compliant codes of conduct that do not envelope students in collective action for systemic understandings of political issues (e.g. Llewellyn et al. 2010). Literature in the field is dominated by calls for educators to challenge neoliberal models of citizenship education that are based on individualistic skill development and ‘good’ character (e.g. Westheimer & Kahne 2004). Few scholars, however, provide a framework for re-visioning civic learning. To this end, we argue in this paper for a restorative approach to citizenship education.

A restorative approach is often associated with the redress of negative behaviours in schools. Disciplinary issues are not the core of this approach. A restorative approach is attentive to the promotion and protection of positive relationships. The core of this approach is relationality. Relational theory holds that as human beings we live in and are constituted by relationships (e.g. Nedelsky 1989). Relational theory challenges the inadequacies of liberal and neoliberal social theory that characterizes the self as individualistic (Downie & Llewellyn 2011). It is antithetical to standardized accountability measures, decontextualized assignments, and curriculum objectives for personal responsibility that are increasingly defining civic learning (Llewellyn et al. 2010). Instead, it is an approach that makes interconnectivity, reflexivity, and democracy the foundation of schooling (e.g. Giroux 2005).

A restorative approach to citizenship education calls not for a recognition of caring relationships as an essentialist model of learning, as might be interpreted from ‘ethic of care’ literature (e.g. Gilligan 1982; Noddings 1988). Rather, a restorative approach to citizenship education is attentive to the range of private and public relationships that support, or potentially thwart, human flourishing (Llewellyn 2011). It is a perspective that is critical to allow for students and teachers to understand the connectedness of people and thus relations of power. Such an approach provides no definitive model of practice, but rather offers principles that are adept enough to respond to contexts for learning. These principles include contextualism, dialogism, appreciative inquiry, and future-orientation.

This paper will illustrate the need for a restorative approach to citizenship education through a discursive analysis of citizenship education guidelines. Discourse analysis highlights the taken-for-granted language used within curriculum documents, and enables scrutiny of the ideological effects that such language can create within the public sphere (Fairclough & Wodak 1997). We examine curriculum guidelines for the principles of relationality, or lack thereof, within civic learning in three Canadian provinces. These include: Civic Studies 11 from British Columbia (British Columbia Ministry of Education 2005); Ontario’s Canadian and World Studies (Ontario Ministry of Education 2005); and Alberta’s Grade 9 Canada: Opportunities and Challenges (Alberta Education 2007). Based on this analysis, we offer a reimagined curriculum based on a restorative approach. This paper demonstrates that by placing the principles of a restorative approach at the core of civic learning, we can shift the pedagogical emphasis away from the individual learner towards the interactive aspects of learner communities that are essential for democratic education.

Authors

• Kristina R. Llewellyn, University of Waterloo

• Jennifer Llewellyn, Dalhousie University