Restorative justice applied in a school context has a dual focus:
- It prevents ill-discipline, violence and crime in teaching and learning through the development of social and emotional skills for the purposes of re-affirming relationships;
- It responds to incidents by focusing on harm and wrong doing through facilitated dialogues, for the purposes of repairing and rebuilding relationships.
How bad is it?
A 2012 study on violence in schools found that:
- 22,2% of children experienced various forms of violence, including sexual assault and online bullying during the period demarcated for the study;
- 44,1 % of learners had experienced some sort of theft;
- classrooms were the most common sites for the incidence of sporadic violence;
- feelings of fear were commonly associated with the schooling experience;
As this was a national study, the situation is not this bad in each school. Whatever the case may be in a particular school, it’s still likely to be a challenge – as it has been for most generations! There are many reasons why children misbehave and each generation needs to find suitable ways of responding.
Current approaches often seem to very legalistic and fragmented. While there is place for proper procedures, what is needed is an integrated approach. An approach that is gaining support internationally is restorative discipline, based on the concepts of restorative justice.
What is restorative discipline?
Restorative discipline has a dual focus:
- It prevents ill-discipline, violence and crime in teaching and learning through the development of social and emotional skills for the purposes of re-affirming relationships;
- It responds to incidents by focusing on harm and wrong doing through facilitated dialogues, for the purposes of repairing and rebuilding relationships;
During these dialogues, particular attention is paid to helping perpetrators accept responsibility and addressing the needs of victims.
Restorative discipline is concerned with the needs of everyone who has been affected by an incident.