Structural supports for restorative practices: funding, people, time, discipline policy, and equity¶

Strategy · All strategies
Evidence · no claims cited

Description¶

The brief identifies structural supports that must be attended to for restorative practices to be implemented and sustained: rethinking success beyond fewer referrals, allocating or reallocating funding, building teams of early adopters, rethinking and reallocating time, restructuring exclusionary discipline policies, and centering racial equity. It recommends creating advisory periods devoted to relationship building, using staff meetings for community building, and embracing the slow pace of community conferences.

Design Implications¶

Context¶

Requirements¶

• Leaders and administrators must rethink and reallocate their use of time in schools

Constraints¶

• The brief notes 'even these results will take several years or more to achieve' for reduced disciplinary incidents

Target Learners¶

• School communities, educators, and district leaders

Target Learning Goals¶

• Sustainable implementation of restorative practices
• closing disproportionate discipline gaps

Related Strategies¶

• Build authentic stakeholder buy-in through relational strategies: show don't tell, slow down to speed up, engage resistors, and asset framing
• Implementation recommendations for school RJ programs: funding, sustainability, policy integration, and professional development
• Restorative Practices
• Replace zero tolerance discipline policies with explicit social-emotional teaching and restorative discipline practices
• Build staff buy-in and mastery through opt-in professional development, social signaling, and preparation for fallback moments
• Build safety and belonging by detracking, offering low-barrier extracurriculars, and implementing restorative approaches in place of exclusionary discipline

Examples¶

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Key Sources¶

• Trout, L. (2021). The toolkit before the toolkit: Centering adaptive and relational elements of restorative practices for implementation success. [Center to Improve Social and Emotional Learning and School Safety at WestEd]. WestEd. https://eric.ed.gov/?id=ED615970