"You fight your battles and you work out how you're going to change": the implementation, embedding and limits of restorative practices in an Australian rural community school

Abstract

Research suggests that the use of Restorative Practice (RP) in schools can foster more positive and inclusive school communities, yet there remains limited research regarding how to embed such practices. As part of a wider study, we present data from school leaders who describe their perspectives on RP and their struggles with implementing it in one rural Australian community school. This school is distinctive because of how it adopted a RP approach in an effort to change both the culture of the school and the culture of the wider community. To better inform our understanding regarding how RP was implemented, we focus on two overlapping dimensions – informing practice and embedding practice – before reflecting critically on some of the issues and limitations involved with using RP as a means of combating structural inequality.