The Potential of Restorative Justice: Holistic Student Development Based on Respect and Relationships

Harnessing educational contexts to build equitable and just societies requires attention to young people’s meaning-making and development. The end goals of such efforts inherently extend beyond the schools themselves to include the skills, orientations, and values youth bring to their lives outside and after school. Additionally, interventions and programs that are meant to be supportive may not be experienced in that way by students. These foci are essential for better understanding the potential of school restorative justice, a growing movement in schools across the world. In this article, I define school restorative justice, review literature on its potential, and then make a case for a developmental perspective on how it might shape young people’s lives and identities. Specifically, I apply the framework of conceptualized peace to argue for attention to how young people interpret, respond to, and build identities in relation to these experiences. The results are consequential because this framework highlights deeper impacts on students, as well as the reasons young people may or may not engage with them.