INTERCAMBIOS COMERCIALES

describe their restorative interventions. The majority of staff in the focus group defined RP in broad terms as a form of communication, whereas a minority of staff had a specific view on repairing relationships:

RV1 It started off as resolving conflict isn’t it, but it’s a lot bigger than that, it is… the whole thing is all about how you speak to each other; how you communicate.

RV2 Yeah language, relationships, communication, empathy… communication I would say, the main thing.

RV3 I think it is all of those things; I would probably add the repairing as well; the repairing of relationships that have broken.

These definitions by the participants in Riverview School sought to describe ‘restorative practice’ (RP). Hence, the focus group emphasised RP as a form of communication which facilitated relationships in the school. These broad definitions were in line with descriptions in the literature, yet they could equally be applied to general teaching practice when assessing the majority view of RP. Importantly, a member of staff also recognised harm by using the word ‘broken’. This final comment resonated with the principle of the articulation of harm. In Riverview School there was also further discussion of whether the term ‘restorative practice’ was an accurate and useful description of what was happening in the school, as illustrated in the following exchange between staff:

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RV3 I think perhaps it makes more sense if you change what we do… as a school, I’m not sure that restorative practice is the best way of describing it; if you call it relational practice… RV2 …then when we’re talking about relational practice we’re saying all the time we’re trying to

think of building and maintaining relationships because of the way we’re interacting, and there are circumstances when there is a specific conflict which then needs a specific

restorative conversation because that’s about repairing but because we’re always looking at building the relationships we’re looking at opportunities to develop relationships through all of our interactions, but then there will be circumstances where actually it’s specifically restorative.

RV4 So I think we’ve talked about that in one of the other sessions that we’ve had, whether it was the right terminology didn’t we for… it’s not necessarily what we’re doing but actually some of the terminology used at specific times, actually the right language…

RV3 Can be misleading.

This discussion by staff at Riverview School indicated that they recognised that the label ‘restorative’ was used for specific conflict situations. However, they also acknowledged that aspects of their practice were not restorative but focused on relationship building and

relationship development while falling under the RP definition. These aspects of

communication and relationship development practice did not require either conflict or harm to be present; hence the term ‘relational practice’.

A secondary topic emerged regarding when restorative approaches were used in Riverview School and when staff were preventing conflict. These two different forms of practice (relational and restorative) were further explained:

RV4 I think it’s a lot about, and this is probably coming from a primary phase, but a lot about the prevention and about the… about investment rather than the reaction to, you know, having the RP conversations is a reaction to something that’s happened, and it’s doing more around the pre- rather than the post-.

This statement shows how a member of staff sought to bridge the two forms of practice, where ‘relational practice’ prevented relationships deteriorating into conflict, whereas ‘restorative practice’ was post-conflict reparation. The Riverview School focus group member recognised the reactive aspect of restorative practice but stressed that investing in communication with pupils would be more beneficial. Therefore, the defining of ‘restorative

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practice’ provided a wider recognition of the proactive aspects in Riverview School, leading to it being categorised as ‘relational practice’ to emphasise the proactive and preventative features of communication in the school. This indicates that the vocabulary of restorative approaches evolved at local level to address inquiry-specific contexts.

The staff at Laguna High staff attending the focus groups were starting to set up RP as a system feature with support from Riverview School. Staff in the first focus group readily accepted the terminology of RP without critique or concern. Also, several members of Riverview staff worked in Laguna High to support school improvement; hence, having a single definition for both schools was useful for consistency of language.

Northside School were beginning their second year of developing restorative practice. The discussions on defining RP indicated that staff were using an alternative term to identify their use of restorative interventions in the school, as shown below:

NS2 Restorative approaches. NS1 Just restorative.

NS5 Just restorative, yeah.

NS1 Just restorative. It’s a buzz word.

In this extract although the term ‘restorative approaches’ is mentioned the term ‘restorative’ was used as a shorthand description of practice and a common descriptor of their restorative interventions. However, it was difficult to ascertain how this shortening of the term came to be used in the school. ‘Restorative’ was used as an umbrella term but two further labels were identified which were again new to the lexicon of restorative approaches. These terms were ‘hard restorative’ and ‘soft restorative’, as one participant explained while defining RP:

NS4 I try and use restorative in different situations. Because one… not one situation’s going to be the same; I mean in some situations I will use obviously maybe softer… a softer side of restorative justice; other times I use the hard side, it just depends on the situation for me. Researcher Oh, you’ve got to break that one down for me; what’s the difference between soft and hard

restorative justice?

NS4 You have a conversation outside the classroom, for example, you know, a private

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that, you lose respect anyway, it’s… umm… on the other hand, the hard approach would be for example if students are just messing… other people; you’ve said to them on more than one occasion, ‘Look you need to stop messing up their learning’ then you just need to leave the classroom; sometimes having that bit of breathing space helps you as a teacher and helps them as well to sort of re-evaluate and find out what exactly are you both… both yourself… myself as a teacher and the student are fighting for.

The definitions of hard and soft restorative justice, according to this member of staff, depended on the audience, i.e., the classroom of pupils. ‘Soft restorative’ was associated with quiet, private conversations when young people were causing low-level disruption within the classroom. Whereas ‘hard restorative’ appeared to be for continuous disruption when a pupil had already been sent out of class, in effect removal of the audience with a pause before the young person was able to return to learning. In Northside School the distinction between ‘hard’ restorative and ‘soft’ restorative was new terminology and suggested localised adaptation language in the school.

In Evergreen College multiple terms were used to describe a restorative intervention at various points during the focus group; these included both ‘restorative approaches’ and ‘restorative justice’ in reference to the same intervention. However, the focus group

members did not reflect on or critique their definition in the school36_{. A member of staff in}

the school also made two further distinctions:

EC6 And so, there’s almost levels of it; there’s the deep restorative and then there’s just the kind of quick conversation which actually is still I think quite effective.

For this participant the distinction seemed to focus on time as the differentiator of the

process. Hence, a quick conversation was for events which might be deemed low-level forms of conflict, whereas deep restorative required a longer amount of time to explore the conflict from different participants’ perspectives.