Just Schools: A Whole School Approach To Restor...
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In 1968, a sheet metal worker named Demetrio Rodriguez decided to file a lawsuit against the Edgewood Independent School District, a high-poverty district located just outside of San Antonio, Texas, serving a predominately Mexican American population. Rodriguez, the father of four children enrolled in the Edgewood district, was frustrated that the schools were dramatically underfunded and marred by dilapidated facilities and weak instruction.1
The following section describes the decision in Rodriguez and examines examples of the different approaches that advocates have used to advance school finance reform within states. The authors highlight some of the unintended outcomes, as well as the most positive aspects of the remedies, in order to inform a new framework for a potential federal right moving forward.
In later rulings, the court began mandating funding for specific programs that could improve student outcomes and close achievement gaps.101 In the 1998 Abbott V decision, the court mandated full-day kindergarten, half-day preschool, whole-school reform for elementary schools, college-transition programs for secondary schools, and other supplemental programs in Abbott districts. The court also granted districts the right to seek additional funding for on-site social services and other supplemental programs as needed.102
The court order for whole-school reform in elementary schools also spurred the New Jersey commissioner of education to implement Success for All, a literacy initiative for low-income, at-risk students, statewide.105 This national program has a long record of increasing reading achievement, closing test score gaps, reducing assignments of students to special education classes, and reducing rates of grade retention.106
In the Finnish school context , restorative practices and mediation are used as an alternative and child friendly process when managing challenging situations, misbehaviour and bullying in schools. Basically, the aim is to increase democracy and pupil participation, strengthen relationships and improve learning of social skills even in conflict situations. Conflicts are seen as learning possibilities, and pupils are understood as an active and capable experts in their peer groups when solving different kind of social situations. In Finland, a restorative approach and mediation have been implemented in schools since 2001 when the programme for mediation in basic schools was established. In Sect. 2, some perspectives from literature and research reports on restorative approach in schools are discussed. In Sect. 3, the history, programme and practices of mediation in Finnish schools are described with the outcomes of mediation activity according the statistics from year 2016. The last section provides conclusions and summary insight.
Morrison and Vaandering (2012) sees that in school context the punitive regulatory framework has been for decades leaning on the form of exclusionary practices, such as referrals, suspensions and expulsions, even though evidence indicates clearly the ineffectiveness and damaging impact of exclusions. They argue that in contrast to a punitive approach a restorative justice framework employs a responsive regulatory approach that identifies social engagement as a key element for safe schools. Morrison and Vaandering emphasises that rather than focusing on external sanctioning systems such as rewards and punishment, restorative justice is focusing on a motivational lever that is embedded in the value base of conflict management. When the traditional approach investigate what law and code of conduct has been broken, who did it and what is a correct punishment, the restorative approach examines what happened, who has been affected and how to repair the harm done. The process includes those closest to the harm and those closest to the community affected. This is distinct to punitive process, where typically the problem and wrongdoer are sent away from the community where the harm occurred. Morrison and Vaandering argues that restorative justice in educational policy creates school communities that move from the predominant paradigm of regulatory formalism, to a paradigm that is more responsive because it enable a process to address the harm through nurturing a human capacity for restitution, resolution and reconciliation (Morrison and Vaandering 2012).
In Finland, progress of school mediation and restorative approach in schools started in 2000 when a group of youth workers under the Finnish Red Cross were invited by education officers of the City of Helsinki to develop a new participatory way to manage misbehaviour and bullying in schools. The programme was called VERSO (comes from the Finnish word vertaissovittelu, which means peer mediation, while verso as such means in Finnish a new tiny plant growing up from the soil) and, at the first stage, the programme developed a training to teach pupils act as peer mediators and adult staff members to mentor their practice in a school. First trainings were established in 2001 in a secondary school and, because of promising feedback (see the data later in this section), there were soon both primary and secondary schools asking for trainings to start the programme. In 2003, the VERSO programme was moved from the Finnish Red Cross to the framework of Finnish Forum for Mediation, just for having a closer connection to the co-operation of other mediation activities and projects in Finland. In 2005, the programme got funding from the Ministry of Education for 2 years and ever since there has been full time workers to develop, evaluate and offer trainings in the programme nationwide. In 2007, the programme got more permanent funding from the Ministry of Social Affairs and Health. According the statistics from 2007 to 2017, a total of 649 schools have been trained to use the VERSO programme in their schools, of which 609 are comprehensive schools and 40 are vocational institute departments. According to the Statistics Finland, there were 2339 comprehensive schools, 342 upper secondary schools and 99 vocational institutes in Finland for the year 2016, but the number of schools is still decreasing.Footnote 1
In conclusion, a restorative approach and mediation in schools can be considered as one dimension to mediation activities and services in Finnish society. It is obvious that when reaching experiences and information of restorative conflict management methods already in a school, pupils can become more aware of the rights and possibilities they can use when there are conflicts during their school years or later during lifetime. Although restorative practices may not totally replace punitive methods in schools, in those schools where VERSO programme is actively used, mediation has been considered as a first practice to use in conflict situation. Thus, a restorative approach has strengthened understanding of the importance of a participatory and child friendly approach and social learning in conflict management. Statistics also indicate with no doubt that most conflicts have been successfully resolved in mediation in schools that use the VERSO programme.
The results discussed in this paper about mediation activity in Finnish schools give a picture that mediation is a working method when managing different kind of conflicts in schools. Learning of conflict resolution and improving social capacity are the main benefits that mediation practice can give to participants, as well as to those involved in mediation in their schools. However, not all members of school societies are ready the move on to restorative values when discussing bullying and misbehaviour in schools. Mediation should be offered as an alternative method when managing conflicts, and one way to decrease the resistance of using mediation is to collect and share proper and clear information of the mediation practice and principles of a restorative approach. This is an ongoing task for those offering the trainings for mediation, schools that are implementing a mediation practice, decision makers in the field of education and for academics in universities.
In Finland, in those schools that are following VERSO programme, restorative practices are used both in proactive tools in a classroom and as a reactive method when managing conflict situations during daily work in a school. As an exception to situation in many other countries, the VERSO programme has had an opportunity to work as a nationwide programme due to the co-operation and economic support from the Ministry of Social Affairs and Health. This situation gives also the basic ground and advantage for systematic evaluation and development of the approach and practices offered by the VERSO programme. Quantitative data discussed in this paper gives some understanding of the progress of action. When having both pupils and staff members trained to mediate, mediation can be used flexibly as a method for early intervention to conflicts before social tension escalates to more traumatic misbehaviour. This co-operation between pupils and staff members is valuable not only from the point of view of social learning and creating atmosphere of trust to each other, but also because challenges a hectic rhythm to school days often cause to daily work and social life in schools. However, this paper does not discuss the quality of the practices or deeper experiences reached in practice. Neither does this paper describe how restorative principles in practice in schools has been fulfilled. Peer mediation has been implemented in Finnish schools since 2001, and the trainings for whole school restorative approach have been offered since 2010. The activity of trainings and ongoing need for the trainings, as well as the feedback of the practice, give an understanding that a restorative approach and mediation are valued more and more in the field of Finnish education.
It is obvious that academic research is still needed to study the effectiveness and results of restorative approach in schools. It is important to evaluate such issues that are producing the benefits that are connected to restorative practices in order to find and understand the elements that creates quality in practices so that the schools can fully benefit from a restorative approach. Both pedagogical and youth cultural aspects should be included in these observations. Currently, the report of the doctorate research on restorative approach in Finnish schools is under completing work by the writer of this article. In that research, it has been asked if and how restorative values has been implemented and how restorative practices and mediation have affected the daily profession of educators that have actively used a restorative approach and mediation in their work. The research is based on qualitative data, and the analysis has followed the Grounded Theory process. As first findings of the results, it seems that to produce a whole school restorative approach there are three needs for educators to be fulfilled: adopting a restorative mindset, practicing actively restorative participation and considering conflicts as learning possibilities to be managed with restorative mediation. What are these concepts, how they can be produced and what challenges there are in implementing will be discussed in the coming dissertation, hopefully before the end of 2018. 59ce067264