Students face innumerable stressors, in and outside of schools. Some schools are better able to support students to thrive, individually and collectively, in the midst of these stressors. Drawing on a qualitative case study of a restorative justice approach in a Canadian primary school, this article explores the role of restorative justice in facilitating student well-being. To interpret this research, I mobilize Antonovsky’s (Health, stress and coping. Jossey-Bass Publishers, San Francisco, 1979) “sense ofcoherence” concept: individuals are most likely to thrive when they perceive their lives as comprehensible, manageable and meaningful. Based on the data, I argue that the Canadian school’s restorative justice policies and practices helped students make sense of complexity within their school lives, building within them a strong sense of individual and collective coherence.

Despite the intensely competitive international higher education sector, universities can still play a role in providing public good through building social solidarity and mobility in volatile and increasingly divided societies. This paper draws on a longitudinal narrative enquiry that follows 22 students from asylum-seeking backgrounds in Australian universities—a distinct group within the category of forced migration whose university experiences have rarely been studied. It explores the students’ visceral realities and tensions as they attempt to navigate government and institutional policies and practices which fail to recognise the unique category and needs of this distinct group. The paper develops a conceptual frame comprising a critical theory of recognition (Axel Honneth) and the feminist developments of recognition (Nancy Fraser). It explores how competing discourses are being played out in Australian universities about the educational needs of students from asylum-seeking backgrounds. Finally, it critically reflects on the role of universities’ policies and practices in enabling and/or constraining public good through recognising the unique needs of students of asylum-seeking backgrounds.

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This paper explores student experiences in the learning context of an enabling program at an Australian university. Access and equity have long been policy goals and institutional ambitions in Australian universities. Enabling programs are an institutional response to bringing in those who otherwise would not have the opportunity to attend university. In this paper, we present findings from a qualitative study that explores how students who participated in the Monash Access Program negotiate and reconcile the idea of university study with the actualities of becoming a university student. Pedagogies in enabling programs are organised around supporting students to develop the capabilities to know themselves as learners and to experience connections to a learning community and thus, the institution. This paper, drawing on research into student experiences in such programs, illuminates the component characteristics of such an enabling pedagogy.

In this article, we focus on the ethical complexities of conducting research with people from refugee and asylum-seeking backgrounds. We provide a critical reading of existing literature using Sevenhuijsen's (1998) framwork of the head, heart, hands and feet of research ethics. In this metaphor, the head refers to the rational approach to ethics, heart to the emotional and intuitive response to ethics, hands to the practical engagement with ethics and feet to the way forward. We argue that traditional and ethical guidelines prescribed by higher education institutions are not sufficient to prepare researchers for the unique complexities of working with refugees and people seeking asylum. Instead, alongside such prescribed and rational approaches, we must also engage the heart, hands and feet. Our aim is to consider how research conducted with students from refugee and asylum-seeking backgrounds can be approached in a holistic and ethical manner.

Restorative justice (RJ) is an idea whose time may have finally arrived. Although the concept has ancient roots and the term has existed in Western societies since the 1970s, only recently has it gained general public recognition. In schools, RJ's popularity is rising world-wide. In fact, education is the fastest growing area for the practice of RJ. Despite an increasing number of schools embracing the approach, it is not clear what educational RJ practitioners are trying to achieve. Adult Intentions, Student Perceptions: How Restorative Justice is Used in Schools to Control and to Engage focuses on the use of RJ in one school in Scotland and one in Canada. While important to understand the intentions of educators in using RJ in schools, those aims must be examined alongside the actual impact that such practices have on students. RJ can be understood and experienced in dramatically different ways by those implementing it. For some, RJ is about creating an environment of and for student engagement that challenges traditional systems of discipline and facilitates learning. For others, RJ is simply another tool for solidifying compliance and meting out punishment, albeit in a kinder, gentler way. Adult Intentions, Student Perceptions provides the opportunity to delve deeply into the stories of two schools and the adults and young people who inhabit them, and consider the broad impact that differing educator understandings of RJ have on students. Adult Intentions, Student Perceptions is a timely book for RJ advocates and critics alike. It challenges a common assumption of some RJ advocates that implementing RJ necessarily creates a classroom environment of social engagement (where students are empowered to engage with one another and think critically, and school relationships and hierarchies are transformed). The student experience relayed in this book shows that RJ can as readily be mobilized to create classroom environments of social control (where students are taught obedience and compliance, and authority and hierarchy are reinforced). Reimer argues that RJ, by itself, does not guarantee certain qualities of relationship, but RJ does allow us to examine relational qualities and ask questions of how school relationships are used to engage and/or control students.

In recent years, restorative justice (RJ) has been increasingly embedded in school policies and practice, primarily as a method to correct individual behavior. RJ, however, has a deeper potential, to help students build relationships and make school safe, equitable and relevant for its members. RJ is a growing social movement–globally and in Canada–that practices peaceful, constructive approaches to violations of legal and human rights. Yet, there is little understanding for how to introduce RJ to teachers so that they are supported to tap into this deeper potential in a sustainable manner. This manuscript provides a discussion of RJ as it is currently understood, implemented, and institutionalized, and we present data collected via focus groups with former teacher candidates enrolled in an RJ-focused teacher education course facilitated through relational pedagogy. The data highlights participants’ perceptions of RJ, the relational pedagogy approach of the course and the impact of the course on participants’ learning experiences. We draw from this data to make a case for embedding the philosophies of RJ and relational pedagogy into teacher education classrooms in order for teacher candidates to develop relationship-building competencies and a capacity to implement RJ in effective, holistic and sustainable ways.

This article explores public perceptions of restorative justice through the examination of media articles and negative online reader comments surrounding a high-profile incident in a Canadian university in which a restorative process was successfully engaged. Utilising relational discourse analysis, we identify how restorative justice is presented in the media and how that presentation is taken up by the public. Media representations of restorative justice create understandings among the public that are profoundly different from how many restorative justice advocates perceive it. The aim of this article is to examine media representations of restorative justice and how these are received by the public so that we can respond constructively.

The practice and popularity of restorative justice (RJ) in education has been growing in recent years. RJ can be understood in dramatically different ways by those implementing it. For some, RJ is about creating an environment of and for student engagement that challenges traditional systems of discipline and facilitates learning. For others, RJ is simply another tool for solidifying compliance and meting out punishment, albeit in a kinder, gentler way. This comparative case study focused on the use of RJ in one school in Scotland and one in Canada, exploring the intersection between educator intentions and student experiences. I determined that the key element is not the implementation of RJ, but the school’s predominant relational objectives. In a school where relational objectives are of social control, RJ is utilized to strengthen that control. Where the relational objectives are of social engagement, RJ is utilized to strengthen that engagement. RJ in schools is a window into what is most fundamental to students: relationships. The study argues that RJ, by itself, does not guarantee certain qualities of relationship, but it does allow us to examine those qualities and ask questions of how school relationships are used to engage and/or control students.

Restorative justice (RJ) has become increasingly accepted in schools worldwide as an effective way to build, maintain and repair student relationships and to deal with student conflict, harm and behavioural issues. It is rare, however, to find schools that utilise RJ to deal with adult relational and behavioural issues. Drawing on a case study in a Canadian school, this paper explores this hypocritical application of RJ, when teachers are not called to practice what they are teaching. The teachers in the school studied named the hypocritical application and openly struggled with it. I argue that the act of grappling with the inequity resulted in a deepened experience of RJ for both teachers and students. By naming and addressing their hypocritical actions, the teachers, paradoxically, acted in a restorative manner, modelling restorative principles and ensuring that RJ was made more comprehensible and relevant to students.

Like many countries, Australia has persistent rates of school exclusion, juvenile offending and recidivism. In response, there has been a growth of ‘alternative education’ provision – interventions that support young people to engage with learning opportunities outside the conventional education system. While alternative education programs educate more than 70,000 students each year across Australia, evidence of their effectiveness is lacking. There is a need to expand understandings of how alternative education provision works in practice, and what models best fit the complex needs of different groups of young people. This paper reports on Out Teach Mobile Education – an individualised alternative education program run by Save the Children, Tasmania. This unique program, operating out of a van, aims to engage young people, who have been involved with the criminal justice system, in further education and employment opportunities. In the paper, the young people involved identify how and why they believe the program works. The young people's perspectives provide valuable understandings of how ‘meaningful education’ in one specific program looks to the individuals involved. The article concludes by arguing that an authentic assessment of alternative education programs must include the voices of the young people whose lives these programs are aimed at improving.

Generations of learning, as a research project, sought to extend the professional experience learning of pre-service teachers by pairing them with retired teachers. This was pursued with the express purpose of extending student experiences in their initial teacher education course and as an additional strategy to further support pre-service teachers in the quest of becoming a teaching professional. This chapter reports on the intergenerational learning that characterised the learning that occurred between pre-service teachers and the retired teachers in the research. In the intergenerational spaces of this research project, conversations between the paired retirees and the pre-service teachers moved fluidly between the theoretical and the practical, using the stories of the retiree and thewonderings of the pre-service teacher as the guide. This chapter focuses on the experience of one pair of participants to reveal howthe learning that occurred between the pre-service teachers and the retired teachers was generative and reciprocal. The generative nature of the exchanges that occurred between the retired teachers and the pre-service teachers centred on a shared respect for and responsibility towards the teaching profession, where developing relationships was recognised as a key element of the professional experience of being a teaching professional.

Research in schools, conducted with students as participants, often attempts to understand the student experience. Yet, by crafting the study through adult eyes, researchers run the risk of limiting and influencing what students tell us (Dockrell, Lewis Lindsay, 2000). This article explores what happens when university researchers intentionally engage with students as co-researchers, an engagement that affects both the product and the process of research. As product, the research community gains a crucial layer of perspective in understanding the complexities of school; as process, the research becomes an important pedagogical tool for students, validating their roles as researchers of their own realities.

This qualitative case study explores the implementation of restorative justice within one Ontario Public School. Restorative justice is a philosophy and a process for dealing with harmful behaviour, viewing such behaviour as a violation of relationships, not rules. My research seeks to present how restorative justice has been implemented in one school, reaching beyond an examination of the effectiveness of restorative justice to an exploration of how teachers and administrators think and feel about, and actually employ, restorative justice practices. My findings suggest that while there is a personal commitment to the practice of restorative justice on the part of both teachers and administrators, if necessary structures and cultural systems are not in place, then it is difficult to sustain the restorative justice program. This study identifies factors needed to sustain a transformative reform such as restorative justice.

In this article, we have explored the experiences of students in a teacher education programme designed to promote the effective teaching of global education. Research to date indicates that, although interest is high among teacher candidates, they often lack confidence in their abilities to bring global education into their future classrooms. By examining their understanding of global education, we explored whether the complexity and conceptual breadth of global education contributes to this lack of confidence. Although there are similarities between teacher candidates understandings of global education and those supported by teacher education programmes, teacher candidates tend to view global education in broader, more vague terms. By limiting the broad concept of global education and encouraging a progressively more nuanced understanding, teacher education programmes can better assist teacher candidates to implement their understanding of global education with confidence.