A Restorative Approach and Bullying - Overview

Background
A restorative approach is not a response to, or a tool to address, bullying behaviours specifically.
Rather, it is as an overarching way of approaching relationships in schools and building healthy and
respectful school communities. It is difficult therefore to reduce the concept of a restorative approach
to a description of a few practices or activities.
A starting point for understanding a restorative approach is relational theory, the idea that human
beings are relational beings. This idea of humans being relational goes beyond the fact that we all live
within a complex web of relationships. While this is true, relational theory also suggests that we are also
constituted through our relationships, that our concept of self (and others) is made (and remade)
through the relationships we hold and experience.
While we have individual agency, relational theory moves us beyond the idea that the choices and
decisions we make are made independently of others, and suggests instead that all that we do (and the
choices we make) as individuals is necessarily linked to the complex web of relationships we navigate
daily because our sense of ourselves exists only through those relationships.
School Context
If all aspects (activities, procedures, traditions) of a schools day to day functioning were considered
through a lens that examined their relational impact on the students in the building, the potential would
be greater that every student would feel like they belong, like they are valued, and that teachers care
about them, promoting positive relationships and school attachment.
Students feel like they belong, like they are valued, and that their teachers and their peers care about
them within the context of the relationships in a school because their concept of self exists through the
relationships they form and experience in school. Because the day to day functioning of a school has an
important impact on relationships, paying close attention to what we do and how we do it is important.
An example of examining an activity through a restorative lens is end of the school year trips that have a
cost component for families. When planning this activity, a school using a restorative approach would
ask the following kinds of questions:
What is the goal of this activity?
Who will be affected (and how) by the way in which we go about achieving that goal?
Approaching this activity in this way might reveal a group of students who are not able to participate for
various reasons. A school trip that is not inclusive of every student impacts negatively the relationships
in the building. Adopting a restorative approach to the planning of this school activity, and making the
potential impact of the activity on relationships the starting point for discussion, might lead to a
different, more inclusive way of celebrating the end of the school year. This is just one example of
adopting a restorative approach school-wide: everything a school does is considered through a
relational lens.
A Restorative Approach and Bullying
Our sense of self, and how we view others, is directly related to the complex web of relationships we
experience. We are constituted by and through our relationships. We cant think about ourselves, or
think about others, outside of the context of relationship.
Students make choices, and act, through a relational lens. Any attempt at understanding their actions or
their motives outside of a relational context is limiting.
Thinking about the relational reality of students is not synonymous with the concept of taught or
learned interpersonal or social skills; it is broader than that. Students with strong interpersonal and
strong social skills can demonstrate behaviour that looks like bullying.
If students are behaving in a certain way, in order to understand the behaviour and address it we have
to look to the relational context, the causes and the circumstances that are prompting or facilitating that
behaviour, and, if we want to change that behaviour, we need to understand the existing context and
causes so we can help students imagine a different relationship, and model better ways of experiencing
relationships.
A relational approach is not an approach to bullying, but to schooling and understanding communities.
It turns our attention to the nature and the health of relationships within schools. What a restorative
approach helps us see is bullying as a relational problem, as a multi-level relational issue.
A restorative approach, which is being supported in schools in Nova Scotia through the Restorative
Approaches in Schools Project (RAISP), will provide a basis for schools to better understand and respond
to bullying. It does so not through a focus on behaviours, but by building positive and healthy
relationships in schools between students, staff, administration, parents and the community.
A restorative approach provides a foundation for the development of programs, policies, practices and
processes capable of building strong and healthy relationships and addressing harmful patterns of
relationships, without being limited to a process or a response to bullying in particular.
A restorative approach is not focused on one particular version (i.e. bullying) of harmful relationships,
although it will likely have a particular and significant effect on bullying, just as it will have a broad and
positive effect on creating healthy and vibrant school communities. A restorative approach addresses
not only issues of bullying, but also issues of inclusion and human rights, for example. It is an approach
that assists us in our understanding of the root causes of bullying, and can help us understand the
relational dynamics of bullying and also the social and systemic factors of exclusion and discrimination,
for instance.
By: Jennifer Llewellyn, Schulich School of Law, Dalhousie University, for the Restorative Approaches in Schools Project (RAISP).
Jennifer Llewellyn May 2013 used with permission