Catalyzing Restorative Justice Adoption and Implementation within Public High Schools

Background and Purpose: Restorative justice (RJ) is being brought into schools to replace more traditional, punitive approaches to discipline and offer alternative strategies for humanizing school environments and encouraging a sense of collective responsibility (McCold, 2005). Adopting this sort of service technology will depend, in part, on an organizational culture that supports risk-taking and experimentation, visionary leadership, and internal structures marked by specialization, professionalization and diversity (Bartunek & Moch, 1987; Zaltman & Duncan, 1977). In the current study context, schools are forming partnerships with community-based organizations (RJ experts) to implement RJ. 

Institutional entrepreneurs are actors who serve as catalysts for structural change, take the lead in being the impetus for, and giving direction to change (Eisenstadt, 1980; DiMaggio, 1980). Seen, as change is a complex political and cultural process, institutional entrepreneurs use discursive strategies to create institutional vocabularies; mobilize and leverage critical resources and design institutional arrangements beyond adoption. Innovations reaching organizations such as RJ are often beneficial. However the benefits are not understood because of innovation failure but because of implementation failure (Klein & Sorra, 1996).

On applying the institutional entrepreneurship and innovation implementation organizational theoretical frameworks, the purpose of the current study is to understand the specific factors and processes that aid in the adoption and successful implementation of RJ in public schools across different partnership contexts.

Methods: The study adopts a two-phased purposively sampled qualitative comparative case study research design. The primary mode of data collection comprised of conducting face-to-face semi-structured interviews with program managers of community-based organizations (n=10) and multiple school personnel across four high schools (n=60). Using the AtlasTi software, verbatim transcripts of audio-recorded interviews were analyzed using an inductive and deductive coding scheme. Additional sources such as school discipline data, observations, contract documents and other media sources were also examined in the study.

Results: Three key factors emerged with regards to adopting and successfully implementing RJ practices within schools- Leadership, Communication and Culture. School principals, often known as bosses of the school building in conjunction with their community partners, strived to universalize systems and structures in place to legitimize the need for RJ within their schools. It was essential for appropriate messaging and training to be provided to school personnel, so as to entrench their belief in viewing RJ as a firm, fair and consistent approach. Several aspects such as the level of partner immersion, staff morale surrounding innovations, and forces external to the school building such as layoffs, budget cuts, leadership changes affected the overall culture within schools; which in turn impacted RJ implementation.

Conclusion & Implications: Stability, visionary leadership and district wide support appear to be integral for successful RJ implementation. However change and reform within historically under sourced, demoralized public schools continues to be challenging. Therefore, it is imperative that school leadership gain personnel buy in by thoroughly explaining the process of change management, create flexible and open channels of communication, and nurture community partnerships, to catalyze and sustain reform efforts in lieu of RJ being a passing trend.