Session: Just Discipline in Schools: Using Multiple Methods to Understand the Processes and Outcomes Associated with Equitable School Climate Interventions (Society for Social Work and Research 28th Annual Conference - Recentering & Democratizing Knowledge: The Next 30 Years of Social Work Science)

Punitive and exclusionary disciplinary practices like suspensions and expulsions have been shown to increase student recipients' likelihood of dropping out and chances of entering the school-to-prison pipeline, with racial disproportionalities in both usage and impact. Scholarship has suggested that reform efforts have failed because of poor and underresourced implementation. In response, the current symposium presents three papers emerging from the Just Discipline Project, a federally funded implementation science and clinical trial of restorative practice implementation across nine elementary schools collectively serving a majority Black and economically disadvantaged body of more than 3,000 students in Greater Pittsburgh. Each paper provides a distinct glimpse into this multifaceted effort at educational and racial justice.

The first paper uses qualitative methods to explore teacher experiences with the first year of JDP's successful restorative practice implementation at its pilot site. Findings indicate that among factors teachers believed to contribute to positive outcomes, two were paramount. First, the inclusion of a full time practitioner to lead the restorative work was seen as a distinguishing feature of this restorative practice model relative to others in the field. Teachers believed this approach to provide necessary support to conduct the work rather than simply layering yet another mandate onto an already strained teaching core. Second, the cultivation of a group of student leaders also versed in the restorative methods was essential. Students were in the unique position of knowing intimately the relational climate of the school, and as such were perfectly positioned to both generate positive culture and respond to conflict and harm where it arose. The second paper uses mixed methods to estimate and describe the ways in which teachers' racial attitudes relate to racial disparities in school discipline. Findings suggest that teacher' more race conscious beliefs' as opposed to race blind beliefs' are associated with lower rates of office referrals, and more positive perceptions of student behaviors, school safety, and the effectiveness of restorative practices. Qualitative findings identify a new classification of teacher racial attitudes--color cautious--whereby teachers endorse abstract beliefs of racial inequality in broader society, but paradoxically do not believe that racial oppression is happening at their own school sites. Finally, the last paper utilizes the RE-AIM implementation science framework to explore the mid-year implementation measures of the JDP's large scale study across nine sites. Results suggest that across sites there is a wide range of progress across key implementation metrics, including teacher buy-in, professional development provisions, student leadership group development, and restorative practitioner's access to students for tiers 2 and 3-level interventions.

Collectively, these three papers provide one of the richest explorations of restorative practice implementation in the field, answering recent scholarly calls for more textured, qualitative, and mixed methods studies that determine what can make restorative practices work or fail across settings. This symposium provides a major step forward in ascertaining those understandings in the name of educational and racial justice for youth.