Teacher Leadership as a Value of Restorative Justice Practice in Schools

Introduction

Ultimately, the purpose of school is to ensure the academic and social growth of all children (Watson Daly et al., 2019). The reality of schools today, however, is there are increasing concerns about safety and disciplinary practices. Lack of school safety is disruptive to the learning environment. This inhibits the quality of a productive school climate and is often a symptom of systemic inequities (Musu et al., 2019). Too often throughout history, schools have approached a mindset of punishment and correction for student disciplinary issues; however, restorative justice practices are proactive measures to provide the tools schools need to prevent problems and reduce aggression among students (Porter, 2007b; Wachtel, 2013; We Are Teachers Staff, 2022).

Evans and Lester (2013) found that restorative justice is not just a practice but also a set of essential values behind the reason for such practices, but more importantly restorative justice in schools focuses primarily on conflict resolution than punishment (We Are Teachers Staff, 2022). While values and practices are important for a school to provide students, school professionals modeling the same values and practices expected of students is an essential leadership custom that has the potential to impact the school community. Restorative justice practices in schools has been in effect for almost a decade (Ryan & Ruddy, 2015).

The National Teacher Leadership Competencies (National Education Association et al., 2018) are designed with equity as a foundational value for teachers to demonstrate leadership within the classroom, school, and community. Teacher leadership values include belief in collaboration; self-actualization; promoting diversity, equity, and inclusion; genuine care for colleagues; and deep respect for the teaching profession (paraphrased, p. 5). Teacher leaders can assume formal or informal roles without losing the teacher identity. Formal roles may include instructional coach, mentor, department chair, team leader, consultant, or specialist.

According to Heifetz et al. (2009), the role of teacher leadership conceives of leadership not as a positional attribute or personality trait but as the exertion of the authority of influence, triangulated with findings from Wenner and Campbell (2017). Leadership has a wide base of power and broad influences. Some leaders look at leadership through a wide lens others look at leadership through a narrow lens. Regardless of the lens, one must still take into consideration the audience. In this case, the audience is classroom teachers, and the leaders are teacher leaders.

However, teacher leadership is impossible without school leaders’ mindset of holding the same values and empowering teachers for distributed leadership, creating ownership of school matters among all. This transformational practice results from a value set that all stakeholders in a school are essential (Garmston & Wellman, 2016). Understanding that teachers are crucial in shaping the school climate and are valued for their contributions to solving school problems is the first step in ensuring restorative justice, the core value set for all stakeholders. Therefore, restorative justice in schools occurs only when there is a culture by which adults understand how to work together in a productive, healthy environment.

Main Focus Of The Chapter

This chapter presents a conceptual framework for how creating teacher leadership in schools is a critical value and practice for restorative justice to exist in a school community. This includes 1) relationships as the key to all parts of a school community; 2) the importance of teacher modeling with students and colleagues; 3) understanding the role of conflict resolution among teacher teams and its association with conflict resolution among students; 4) collective accountability among all school stakeholders; 5) distributed leadership as an equity practice for addressing power differentials; and 6) implications for research on teacher leadership and restorative justice.