Villanova College has been
actively working on implementing Restorative Practices, as part of a
whole-school renewal process we call our Schooling Project, since a few
staff were introduced to the concept by
Terry O'Connell
in 2003. In 2004, we engaged
Marg Thorsborne
to take the entire staff through training sessions over a number of
months, and to train a smaller number of conference facilitators. This
input from such knowledgeable and experienced practitioners was
essential to help sustain the initial momentum for change.
Right from the very
beginning, though, we found that study of the extensive literature
published in the field helped us to develop our own vision of RP for the
school, and this has continued to the present day. We have now developed
our own induction programs for new staff and are continuing to develop
and deliver our own ongoing professional development program for staff
based on the literature and our growing experience. For us, this program
of study and reflection as a staff has been essential in order to
continue to move forward. The insights gained from such study have
helped us design and refine our approaches and continues to inform our
practice.
For more
information about our implementation of RP within the school see the
resources below, visit our College website page on
RP@Villanova, or
contact us via email
here.
PLEASE
NOTE: Many of the document links below are to large
PDF or PPT or Word files. Because of their file size,
where the link is identified as a pdf or ppt or Doc
file, we would recommend downloading them to your
computer and then opening them locally, rather than
simply clicking on them to open in your browser. To
download a document, right click on the link and select
"Save target as" (in Internet Explorer) or "Save
link as" (in Mozilla Firefox).
We have developed our own Professional
Development program at Villanova which includes an introductory series
of workshops as part of our Staff Induction program for new teachers,
as well as a series of evening workshops that explore some of the
themes of RP in much more practical detail.
The curriculum outline of some of these
workshops is given below:
RP101 &
RP102 - the professional learning
workshops conducted each year
RP101J -
a special professional learning workshop designed for the Junior
School staff
RP201 -
the introductory training program for Conference Facilitators
This paper forms the basis of a workshop presented at the 5th
Restorative Justice Aotearoa National and 3rd Restorative Practices
International Conferences, 23 – 27 November 2011, Wellington, NZ. [accompanying
Powerpoint presentation 11MB]
This
Presentation is the workshop given at the Edmund Rice Education
Australia Conference - Restorative Justice and Building Effective
Relationships for Teaching and Learning held at Riverglenn
Conference Centre, Indooroopilly, on Monday 8th September 2008. The pdf
file is a paper of the presentation given in the Workshop.
This powerpoint presentation is
the workshop given at the inaugural
Restorative Practices International (RPI)
conference "Best Practice in Restorative Justice:
Transformational Change"held on the Sunshine Coast in October, 2007. The views
expressed in the presentation reflect the thoughts of the presenters.
For privacy reasons, photos of students originally included in the
presentation have been removed. Bibliography
for this presentation.
- [pdf 12kB]
"In Mind and Heart: One
School's Journey into Restorative Practices" [2005 &
2006]
[pdf
file 1.6MB]
This powerpoint presentation was made at the International Institute
for Restorative Practices (IIRP) Sixth International Conference: "Building a Global Alliance
for Restorative Practices and Family Empowerment" in March, 2005, at
Penrith, New South Wales.
This workshop
was also presented at the International Conference for Augustinian Education
Institutes conducted in Rome in 2006.
This collection of nine articles from
various sources forms the first part of our induction program for new
staff. We believe that gaining an understanding of the RP philosophy
from the original sources is important to understanding where we started
- and where we are going.
Even though some of these are referenced to
book form, most of them are available freely from the internet.
Restorative justice in schools. Hopkins, B. (2002). Support for Learning,
17(3).
[Not
currently available online - see Belinda Hopkins book in the list
above.]
Restorative Justice in
Schools. Morrison, B. (2005) In New Directions in
Restorative Justice: Issues, practice, evaluation.
Elizabeth Elliott & Robert M Gordon (Eds),
Willan Publishing, Devon 2005 [Not currently
available online - but this resource is well worth buying]
The Role of
Language in Creating School Community.
Restorative Practices for Schools: A Resource by the Restorative
Practices Development Team at the University of Waikato. [Not currently available online, but for
purchase from
HERE.
It's well worth buying]
What you Need
to Know about Shame and Pride.
Nathanson, D.
[Not available online, but comes with an excellent video program
entitled "Managing Shame: Preventing Violence" which is available for
purchase
HERE.
Definitely recommended.]
Nathanson's major work in affect theory and shame is
the book "Shame and Pride: Affect, Sex and the Birth of the Self" and is
available here from the IIRP.
This presentation is made to parents at
Information Nights at the beginning of each year. It is usually a lively
event with many questions being posed and key points coming out in
discussion.
This powerpoint originally formed the basis of the students' first
encounter with the concepts of RP. It was designed to be used at the
beginning of a Year 8 Humanities unit on Conflict and Violence that
deals with issues such as bullying.
It has now been completely rewritten and extended into units
including a more complete study of the Compass of Shame and developing
emotional literacy, appropriate to the needs of Year Eight and Year Nine
students.
An Introductory Unit on RP for our Year Five students has now also been
developed and implemented.
For further information on either of
these curricular units, please
email us.
This short article is an appendix in the Community Conference
Manual that we have developed for inservice training and use by
facilitators within the College. The full Training Manual is not reproduced here
but it draws on published manuals listed above in the resources
section - particularly Terry O'Connell's REAL Justice Conferencing
Manual and Marg Thorsborne's Restorative Practices in Schools: Rethinking Behaviour
Management. The article here was written especially to address a
particular issue in Conferencing and RP in general, namely a comparison
of punitive and restorative responses.
Based on the RP literature around bullying,
alienation and violence, especially the work of Brenda Morrison and
Eliza Ahmed (references listed on the Articles page), this campaign to reduce the
incidence of bullying in our School Community combines proactive
strategies to build empathy, connectedness and respect, as well as RP
responses to incidents of bullying behaviour. A major focus of this
year's campaign - coming out of Ken Rigby's work - is addressing
"bystander behaviour" and encouraging and enabling students who may
witness bullying behaviour to take appropriate steps to discourage it
developing further.
Key aspects of the campaign included a series
of posters displayed around the three schools, a voluntary
'anti-bullying pledge' for students, parents and staff to sign, as well
as through an information campaign shared via pastoral care/personal
development periods and a curriculum unit in Year 8. This campaign
was developed with senior students and launched by our Senior leaders.
It has been promoted through our public website
here.
Restorative Practices at
Villanova - 
