Restorative Practices for Empowerment: A Social Work Lens

• In Event: Marriott Roundtable Session 12
  In Roundtable Session: "It 'Works,' but Will It Work for Me?" Supporting Teachers' Restorative Practice

Abstract

Purpose
A recent year-long ethnographic multi-case study (author, 2016) of three urban public schools, all of which employed majority White staff and enrolled majority Black and Latinx students, identified inconsistencies in terms of how restorative practices were implemented and experienced. While the larger study focused on both preventative and responsive restorative practices, this paper explores data on one particular type of preventative practice called community-building circles. The purpose of this study is to examine, through interviews with teachers and students, the benefits and challenges of using community-building circles. We then apply social work concepts—specifically, Empowerment Theory—to recommend adjustments to community-circle facilitation, and what this means for teachers and the social workers who support them.

Theory, Methods, and Data Sources

We conceive of restorative practice through an interdisciplinary frame that brings together notions of “community-building” in both education and social work with groups. A social work approach with groups known as “adventure-based group work” helps develop community through shared ‘adventure’ experiences: structured, consistent experiential opportunities to engage in individual and group challenges and feel supported by others in meeting those challenges (Norton & Tucker, 2010). We therefore define effective implementation of Tier 1 practices as that which facilitates a unique, shared experience for both students and teacher, beyond the typical content-based academic goals, in order to build community and foster social and emotional learning.

The current study utilized data from observations and interviews pertaining to Tier 1 practices (as opposed to Tier 2 or 3 practices). These tier 1 practices primarily occurred in ‘advisory’, a class like homeroom where students have time for social and emotional skill-building and check-ins with a teacher who serves as a general academic and personal coach.

Results

Our overarching finding was that the nature of restorative practice implementation depended on teachers’ and students’ relationships with each other, the teachers’ familiarity with how to implement such practices, and the level of support they received in doing so. Our findings also revealed gaps in teachers’ ability to fully implement community-building circles, given limitations in their training and constraints in their roles as teachers.

Significance
Teachers and mental health professionals can work together to develop a circle practice that is explicitly anti-racist, culturally responsive, and trauma-informed. However, we recognize that not all schools—especially urban schools, which are more likely to be implementing restorative practices with little funding—can afford to hire enough counselors or social workers to serve students’ individual mental health needs of all students, let alone sit in on community-building circles. We therefore make recommendations for what is needed for in-service and pre-service teacher training. These recommendations cluster around 1) Explicit modeling of and instruction in social and emotional skills; 2) Professional development strategies that include ongoing support for circle facilitation; 3) Effective awareness of trauma and how to address it; and 4) Anti-bias work using Empowerment Theory.

Authors

• Hilary Lustick, University of Massachusetts - Lowell

• Sonia Rey Lopez, Texas State University

• Christine Norton, Texas State University

• Jennifer Greene-Rooks, Texas State University