Restorative Justice in the Classroom:Liberating Students’ Voices Through Relational Pedagogy

by: Crystena A. H. Parker-Shandal (Author)

Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
Edition:1st ed. 2022

Publication Date: 13 Jan. 2023

Language: English

Print Length: 317 pages

ISBN-10: 3031165896

ISBN-13: 9783031165894

Book Description

This book focuses on how teachers can transmit and practice values through classroom circles that attend to and empower all students’ voices. A growing number of teachers are using relational pedagogy, drawing on Indigenous circle practice, as a pedagogical tool. Done well, circles can build and sustain dialogue and peaceful relations. Done poorly, circles reflect and reinforce relations of power, which, if disregarded, can be damaging for participants whose voices are silenced or not sufficiently heard. Parker-Shandal’s consideration of teachers’ professional leaing and training in restorative justice in education focuses on ethnographic, classroom-based research in diverse urban elementary schools. Her data include observations of classrooms, teacher surveys, and interviews with students, teachers, and principals. The book provides a detailed account of the lived experience of students and teachers as they engage with and experience the transformative power of constructive dialogueabout conflicts embedded in curriculum subject matter through restorative justice pedagogies.