Restoration and Repair: An analysis of young adult novels related to restorative justice

• In Event: Critical Resisting: Reading, Writing, and Digital Activism

Abstract

Objective
Restorative/transformative justice (RJ/TJ) is an approach to repair which centers relationship and healing over punishment and exclusion (Winn 2018; Zehr, 2015). Because of restorative justice’s emphasis on storytelling, English classrooms have been positioned as natural spaces in which to take up a restorative justice mindset (Winn et al., 2019). At the same time, young adult literature (YAL) can support students in critically engaging with issues like justice and equity (Morrell & Morrell, 2021). However, when YAL does not fully represent students’ varied identities, opportunities are lost for critical engagement. This paper presents the results from a critical content analysis of YAL which invokes RJ/TJ in order to support educators who want to engage students with critical literacies around the possibilities of RJ/TJ programs.

Theoretical Framework/Perspectives
Critical literacy practices are rooted in the goal of students “reading the word and the world,” (Freire, 1985, p. 15). Morrell and Morrell (2021) argue that “critical literacy is at the heart of transformative teaching” (p. 52). Secondly, Goodmark (2018) theorizes restorative justice as a feminist practice and presents six tenets: voice, empowerment, community, intersectionality, dismantling the patriarchy, and ending gender-based violence. In this paper, we reconstruct the final two tenets as “transformation” in our analysis. Taken together, critical literacy and restorative justice as feminist practice guide our project’s purpose and data analysis.

Methods & Data
We drew on Short and World’s (2017) critical content analysis framework for examining selected texts tagged with themes of restorative or transformative justice found by searching web based bookstores and book recommendation sites. We read one text together to align our coding and then began to read and code the remaining books (n=7) for how RJ/TJ is represented.

Results
Results from this critical content analysis revealed several surprising results, particularly in terms of the protagonist’s identity. For example, while RJ/TJ is typically framed as an approach to harm which centers the needs of the person harmed (Goodmark, 2018; Zehr, 2015), the majority of the texts (57%) centered the experiences of the person(s) causing harm. Further, in examining whose voices were represented, a majority of the protagonists (71%) in the books are adolescent boys. This privileging of male voices, and thus stories, works in opposition to our goal of all students—particularly girls and non-binary youth—being able to read themselves into the text and imagine the possibilities of RJ/TJ in their lives and in their schools.

Significance
Combined these findings reveal a perspective and representation of the possibilities of RJ/TJ that fail to take into account the real lived experiences of girls and non-binary youth which may limit the imaginings of students seeking to engage with questions of what is justice and for whom in their school contexts. Given hyper policing of girls and non-binary students in K-12 settings (Annamma, 2017; Palmer & Greytak, 2017; Scaramanga 2023), their presence within these narratives is all the more important in order to provide exposure to alternative forms of healing and restoration.

Authors

• Mary McConnaha, Michigan State University

• Stephanie Robillard, St. Mary's College of California