“It is the level of connectedness within school communities that determines whether that particular community's responses to wrongdoing will be effective in changing the behaviour of individuals within it. Braithwaite refers to this connectedness as interdependency leading to communitarianism."
Bill Hansberry
Restorative Practices Training for Schools
The way schools think about and address inappropriate and harmful behaviour can be transformed through the use of restorative practices. Punitive approaches to school discipline quickly lose sight of the fact that discipline is essentially an educative process; Restorative Practices give schools the tools to re-claim the educative agenda of school discipline through teaching the concepts of accountability, active responsibility, win-win conflict resolution and empathy. Restorative Practices are a constructivist based pedagogy that can be powerfully employed in schools and school communities to equip young people for living and working with others.
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Restorative practices ask schools to ask themselves:
Does our school’s approach to discipline strengthen relationships between members of the school community or does it erode relationships?
Emerging research from all over the globe is pointing to the benefits of a restorative and relational approach to conflict and wrongdoing. Safer school communities are being restored through a commitment to relationships and restorative approaches that support these relationships.
Bill has delivered both face to face, and on-line training to thousands of educators and educational leaders in the area of restorative justice practices in Government, Catholic and Independent schools.
Schools are not buildings, curriculum timetables and meetings. Schools are relationships and interactions among people.
(Johnson & Johnson, 1994)
Restorative Conferencing in Schools
Many schools have used Bill’s skills and experience in the planning and facilitation of formal restorative conferences to address incidents of harm and conflict. As well as helping schools bring significantly harmful situations to a peaceful resolution, Bill has modelled conference planning and facilitation process so school based personnel can deepen their understanding and capacity to work restoratively. Having an experienced conference facilitator guide colleagues through the conference planning and facilitation process is a powerful learning experience for aspiring restorative practitioners and value adds to formal training in conference facilitation.
