Restorative practice originates from the use of restorative justice in the criminal justice system as a way of repairing harm between victim and offender. Contrasting with retributive and distributive forms of justice, where the focus is on punishment of the offender and fair compensation for the victim, restorative practice and restorative justice emphasise restitution of the harms on both sides of the offending equation. Restorative justice is based on the concept of reintegrative shaming (Braithwaite, 1989) whereby the wrongdoer is treated with respect and empathy rather than judgement and stigma, while simultaneously confronting the wrongful act to support social reintegration. This inherently democratic approach to managing behaviour has become increasingly utilised in schools since the early 2000s (González et al., 2019), with evidence of impact in relation to decreases in student suspensions and behaviour referrals. Some studies have suggested ‘that the use of restorative practice in schools might improve bullying and student-teacher relationships’ (Weber and Vereenooghe, 2020, p. 2).

Social pedagogy is a multifaceted theoretical perspective that has been conceptualised as a science, a professional practice and a system of education (Hämäläinen, 2015). Some common denominators have been identified, particularly ‘the interest in opportunities to alleviate social ills through education … by paying special attention to the processes of social integration and emancipation … [emphasising] the importance of community in human development’ (Hämäläinen, 2015, pp. 1034–5). It is here that the use of restorative practice in schools and social pedagogic principles intersect, through their common focus on alleviating social ills through education and in community. As suggested by Hopkins (2009), ‘restorative practice provides a framework … to operationalise socially pedagogic principles, especially in challenging situations’ (p. 19). In particular, the social discipline window (Wachtel, 2013) as a key theoretical driver for restorative practice emphasises doing things with (rather than not, to or for) individuals, to highlight the limits of neglectful, punitive and permissive responses to misbehaviour and to uphold a sense of agency through relationship with others in a community.

Relatedly, bell hooks’s (cited in Maniglia, 2022) notion of an engaged pedagogy where teaching is ‘relational and personal’, with students and teachers making the effort not only to know one another but also to ‘actually care about one another’ (p. 240), ties into core values of restorative practice in fundamental ways. hooks’s (cited in Maniglia, 2022) emphasis on the importance of lived experience where ‘instructors know their students well enough to assist them in seeing … lived connections’ (p. 241) links to a working definition of restorative practice as ‘an ideology grounded in relationships, enacted through positive communication, bringing individuals and communities to a place of awareness and accountability’ (Procter-Legg, 2022, p. 2) wherever harm appears.

Despite the potential and positive intentions of restorative practice and restorative justice to treat young people with decency and inclusion when contending with problematic behaviour, it has been pointed out that there is clear and present danger of this approach being utilised in ways that allow ‘adultist agendas [to] set in’ (Vaandering, 2010, p. 169). By ignoring structural inequalities fuelling offending behaviour and locating notions of blame solely on the individual identified as the offender, restorative practice and restorative justice become vulnerable to being seen as merely ‘a means for managing student behaviour in a school environment … instead of a means by which to understand the exercise and effects of specific sorts of power relations’ (Vaandering, 2010, p. 169).

This article provides a critical understanding of restorative practice in school through the lens of bell hooks (1994, 2000, 2003; Brosi and hooks, 2012) by utilising the model of whole-school restorative practice that was observed in one school in the north-east of England. Here, the use of restorative practice was enhanced by vertically structured coaching groups (CGs) of eight to ten pupils that students joined on entering and remained in for the duration of their time in school. The aims of these group were to manage behaviour through relationship (Hibbin, 2023; Warin and Hibbin, 2020). As explored by Schumacher (2014) in her ethnographic study of therapeutic weekly talking circles, CGs provided students with ‘a safe space for peers helping peers’ (p. 3). Relatedly, the definition of restorative practice as an ‘ideology grounded in relationships, enacted through positive communication’ (Procter-Legg, 2022, p. 2) links to the safe communicative space of the CG, as well as to hooks’s (1994) notion of engaged pedagogy, where students and teachers work to know and care about each other. As such, the CGs in the school could be understood as a self-contained system of pro-social support, linking in with the social pedagogical contention that special attention must be paid to ‘the pedagogic meaning of people’s spontaneous common action within a self-governing community’ (Hämäläinen, 2015, p. 1035).

As might be well understood by the reader of this special issue, bell hooks is commonly associated with critical pedagogy and intersectionality within adult education. As a result, it seems perhaps unusual to be applying her ideas to the use of restorative practice through coaching in school. However, as pointed out by Vaandering (2010), hooks’s insight ‘calls attention to the fact that concepts of humanisation, community, and conflict are universal and of as much importance in the lives of young people, as adults’ (p. 171). Therefore, hooks’s focus on engaged pedagogy in the democratic classroom, education as the practice of freedom and the notion of beloved community (Brosi and hooks, 2012; hooks, 1994, 2003), all have important links to restorative practice through coaching in school. In addition, her links to critical and feminist theory provide a backdrop to the politics of domination (hooks, 1994, 2003) that are prevalent in schools, evidenced through institutional responses to misbehaviour, which favour isolation and exclusion over inclusion and repair (Golding, 2021).

‘Embedding Restorative Practice in Schools’ (Warin and Hibbin, 2020) was a national, two-year evaluation study that aimed to explore pockets of good practice of whole-school restorative practice, capturing the ways that effective schools sustain restorative practice over time. In total, nine school settings were recruited to the study through purposive and snowball sampling, ranging from primary and secondary settings to schools for specialist educational need and disability.

Auden Downs (pseudonym) – the secondary mainstream school that is the focus of this analysis – had a novel method of implementation of restorative practice through coaching based on their 14 years’ experience (at the time of the evaluation) of implementing CGs, which they went on to merge with the delivery of restorative practice after seven years. Data collection at Auden Downs involved semi-structured interviews and focus groups with senior leadership, class teachers, coaching leads, pupils and parents. In total, four interviews with coaching leads, two interviews with senior leadership, two parental interviews, three student focus groups and two staff focus groups were undertaken over the course of three in-person visits. Interview questions centred on staff training, staff perceptions of coaching and restorative practice, behaviour management strategies used in the school, the school exclusion policy, the impact of coaching and restorative practice on the child and the adults, the role of leadership, communication strategies and parental engagement.

Ethics for the project was granted by Lancaster University Ethics Committee and informed consent was gained from research participants. All data was de-identified, including the school name, and role names were used rather than assigned pseudonyms. All data was stored securely on a password protected server in line with the General Data Protection Regulation (2018).

Bell hooks (1994) suggests that ‘we must intervene to alter the existing pedagogical structure and to teach students how to listen, how to hear one another’ (pp. 149–50). This dialogic principle is central to the social pedagogical notion of Bildung as an inherently relational practice, one that refers to the ‘inner development of the individual … through education and knowledge’ (Watson, 2010, p. 53). The dialogical approach was similarly central at Auden Downs, where students were taught how to undertake a restorative conversation and to uphold the core values of restorative practice. However, it was in the context of coaching that those skills were modelled and enhanced, where restorative practice could be practised naturally within a trusted community of peers over time and where coaches were seen to ‘orchestrate’ and facilitate ‘the space for dialogue … in the classroom’ (hooks, 1994, p. 151). In addition, coaches were expected to connect on a personal level with their coachees, getting to know them on an individual basis and attending to their ‘emotional climate’ (hooks, 2003, p. 133). It is this aspect of restorative practice through coaching that was transformative. hooks (2000) defines love as ‘a combination of care, commitment, knowledge, responsibility, respect, and trust’ (p. 131). However, she goes on to highlight that convention teaches us that the presence of love in the classroom context is often frowned on:

To speak of love in relation to teaching is already to engage a dialogue that is taboo … When we talk about loving our students, these same voices usually talk about exercising caution … Emotional connections tend to be suspect in a world … where the idea that one should be and can be objective is paramount. (hooks, 2003, p. 127)

hooks (2003) acknowledges that ‘teachers are not therapists’, noting that educators are sometimes ‘fearful of engaging students with love because they worry about being engulfed’ (pp. 127–8). However, she contrasts this with the idea that preoccupation with objectivism can frequently act as a screen for ‘individuals who … simply could not connect’ (hooks, 2003, p. 127–8). This need for connection through communication in ‘beloved community’ (Brosi and hooks, 2012) was central to the formulation of the CGs, where students reported feeling safe within the secure family base of their peers over time. Student voice was amplified in CGs, supported by the interlocutory role of the coach, who would encourage students to share information to enable students to ‘connect … emotionally’ (Student) with their CG. As suggested by hooks (1994), the ‘inclusion of confessional narrative or of digressive discussions, where students are doing a lot of the talking’ (p. 151) is of immense importance to community building. Here, individuals are facilitated by capable guides to be open and honest, deepening relationships and personal understanding of vulnerability, to undertake the difficult wok of ‘nam[ing] our pain, to make it a location for theorizing’ (hooks, 1994, p. 74): ‘Community is the coming together of a group of individuals who have learned how to communicate honestly with each other; whose relationships go deeper than their masks of composure’ (Peck in hooks, 2003, p. 196).

This ‘collective participation and dialogue’ (hooks, 1994, p. 186) connects to social pedagogy’s assertion that the role of the pedagogue is to facilitate ‘dialogue between the child and the world, by not only using her head but also her heart’ to support meaning making and ‘dealing with the resistance of the world’ (Rothuizen and Harbo, 2017, p. 14). As suggested by Dahlberg and Lenz Taguchi (cited in Moss, 2013): ‘Bildung’s most important subject is people as a whole and not … the individual … The acquiring of knowledge must be understood as a process that assumes an active interaction with other people and phenomena in the environment’ (p. 29).

hooks (1994) goes on to flesh out the importance of dialogue that goes beyond ‘a shallow emphasis on coming to voice’ (p. 186) through equal airtime. Rather, the emphasis is on the more complex role of dialogue in students feeling valued, in learning from one another and reflecting on individual experience, highlighting a dialogic approach that creates ‘spaces in the classroom where all voices can be heard because all students are free to speak, knowing their presence will be recognized and valued … Just the physical experience of hearing, of listening intently, to each particular voice strengthens our capacity to learn together’ (hooks, 1994, p. 186).

The importance of student voice links in with hooks’ (2003) view on love as an essential element of conscious teaching requiring close attention to the emotional climate in the classroom and any ‘psychological conflicts … blocking the student’s capacity to learn’ (pp. 127–8). A culture of disclosure was therefore encouraged at Auden Downs, but it also was not forced; rather, it was a by-product of the secure family base through coaching that was part of the organisational infrastructure, offering a disproportional level of support from both peers and coach over time. This is something that hooks (1994) notes in relation to her own teachers, who made sure they ‘knew our parents, our economic status, where we worshipped, what our homes were like, and how we were treated in the family’ (p. 3). The emphasis here on knowing the child well stands in contrast to the ‘politics of domination’ (hooks, 1994), which is perhaps the best way to conceptualise hooks’s thinking in relation to disciplinary systems in school. While class politics in the democratic classroom was more a focus of her writing than student behaviour and its management, she was clear that banking models of education, ‘where students are objectified and managed in an effort to fit into boxes that benefit adult expectations’ (Vaandering, 2010, p. 152), require a reorientation that challenges the existing order. She promoted love as core foundation of teaching: ‘My awareness of class … has helped me to employ pedagogical strategies that create ruptures in the established order, that promote modes of learning which challenge bourgeois hegemony’ (hooks, 1994, p. 185).

An alternative to the politics of domination (hooks, 1994, 2003) is at the heart of the non-hierarchical system of discipline at Auden Downs, one built on coaches knowing the child on an individual basis in school. In addition, the disciplinary system was based on the democratic delivery of restorative practice across the whole school, providing explicit training and opportunities for students to take on restorative practice rep and assistant coach roles. This approach created ruptures in the established order by bringing students from all cohorts, backgrounds and abilities on board with the wider approach. These ruptures worked towards reducing the adultist agendas in restorative practice (Vaandering, 2010), allowing restorative practice to being done with, rather than to, children and young people, working within the social discipline window (Wachtel, 2013). The ruptures also extended beyond the rank and file of whose job it was to mete out discipline, to incorporate a notion who was best placed to deliver a sanction or advocate for a student, through familiarity with individual needs uncovered through coaching over time. This relational system of discipline that centred on equity rather than equal treatment contrasted with the ‘blunt tool of broad-brush, de-individualised behaviour policies’ (Hibbin, 2023, p. 15) so frequently seen in school. It also contrasted with overly punitive responses to misbehaviour devoid of learning opportunities that frequently result in the reasons for misbehaviour being entirely missed (Golding, 2021; Kupchik, 2010). Overall, this whole-school use of restorative practice through coaching, with everyone taking responsibility for behaviour, supported emancipatory and social activist elements of social pedagogy through ‘a commitment … to ending submission to authority, the achievement of consciousness and sustaining the process of self-formation; creating the subject as a protagonist, a self-determining actor’ (Moss and Petrie, 2019, p. 397).

Restorative practice has been criticised in recent years in relation to deteriorating discipline in UK classrooms, particularly in Scotland, where restorative practice in schools has been vigorously pursued (Stewart, 2023). It is important to contrast the use of restorative practice through coaching in Auden Downs with the use of restorative practice in contexts where it represents just another ‘broad-brush and de-individualised’ behaviour policy (Hibbin, 2023, p. 15). As already described, the roots of restorative practice can be traced back to conflict resolution within the criminal justice system (Braithwaite, 1989). As such, restorative practice can be seen to lie on a continuum from tick-box reactive forms that are more in line with notions of negative peace and the absence of violence (Bevington and Gregory, 2018) to preventative and pro-social forms, as seen in Auden Downs, that support the creation of positive peace through community building over time (Bevington and Gregory, 2018; McCluskey et al., 2008).

Gregory and Evans (2020) suggest that restorative practice is unlikely to work well in school contexts where:

it is mandated in top-down initiatives that are ‘misaligned with values’ of restorative practice;

As a result, restorative practice that has suffered at the hands of poor implementation is unlikely to see the kind of results witnessed at Auden Downs, where both a top-down and bottom-up approach utilising a variety of practices, cognisant of power dynamics and marginalisation, with multiple implementation supports over the long term (Gregory and Evans, 2020), was in evidence. This resulted in an environment where positive peace through active prevention was predominant.

As suggested by Parsons (2005) ‘“goodies for baddies’ is hard to sell’ (p. 192) and is often seen as a soft option (Warin and Hibbin, 2016) in societies where retributive and distributive notions of justice tend to hold sway. However, in Auden Downs a subversion of the established order, based on restoration and relational repair in a community context, was a core element of institutional identity (Hibbin, 2023; Hibbin and Warin, 2021; Warin and Hibbin, 2016, 2020). Wilson and Wilson’s (1998) notion of relational responsibility where the ‘individual is responsible for his or her own actions, but not in isolation’ (p. 157) is relevant here. A core feature of Indigenous systems of accountability, relational responsibility reframes blame for poor behaviour from a solo to a collective pursuit ‘the tradition of individual responsibility – in which single individuals are held blameworthy for untoward events – has a chilling effect on relationships. It typically isolates and alienates and ultimately invites the eradication of the other – a step toward non meaning’ (McNamee and Gergen, 1999, p. xi).

Reconciliation in the context of community is a central focus of hooks’ (Brosi and hooks, 2012) teachings, linking in with the idea that the reason why restorative practice worked so well in Auden Downs is because it was modelled and practised through the community, in the secure family base of the CG. hooks suggests that community is central because ‘no one is healed in isolation’ (Brosi and hooks, 2012, p. 86), and because it is important to undertake the difficult task of creating trust across difference rather than merely prioritising commonality:

Creating trust usually means finding out what it is we have in common as well as what separates us … Lots of people fear encountering difference because they think that honestly naming it will lead to conflict. The truth is our denial of the reality of difference has created ongoing conflict … We become more sane as we face reality … and learn both to engage our differences, celebrating them when we can, and also rigorously confronting tensions as they arise. (hooks, 2003, p.109)

Ultimately, the approach taken in Auden Downs resulted in an increased emphasis on forgiveness, reconciliation and ‘bonding across difference’ (Brosi and hooks, 2012, p. 79), where CGs could be understood as a site of ‘unity within diversity’ (hooks, 2003, p. 109). In a published conversation between George Brosi and hooks (2012), family is located as the site where individuals ‘learn that struggle of bonding across difference’ where ‘profound differences of opinion and belief’ (p. 79) do not preclude closeness but rather foster the ability to reconcile. The creation of diverse family groups in Auden Downs was a very deliberate ploy by the school where exposure to diversity in community was a direct result of a deliberate attempt to create a strategically organised community through coaching. This was the basis of the interspersion harnessed by John Fee during the racial planning of Berea, where hooks was honorary professor, a process that goes beyond integration and a ‘pseudo-sentimental idea of community’ to emphasise ‘community that is a practice, and as Fee understood, a community that had to be strategically organized’ (Brosi and hooks, 2012, p. 78). This strategic organisation links to social pedagogic principles in important ways; as suggested by Eichsteller and Holthoff (2011):

a social pedagogy, which aims to encourage a strong sense of community, educates both children and adults to ensure positive relations between … the individual and society, and fights to close the gap between rich and poor. All of these aims are significant for societal well-being and people’s sense of responsibility for each other. (p. 40)

Clearly, differences between some students on an individual and demographic basis created social separation; as described by the coaching Coordinator, ‘they would not be friends’. However, the complex work that went into balancing the CGs by providing a deliberately diverse mix was considerable. The impact of this on processes of forgiveness and reconciliation cannot be overstated. It is our exposure to difference in pro-social contexts where conflict resolution is modelled and taught that enables us to ‘hear difference’ (Brosi and hooks, 2012, p. 86) and build community:

The truth is that you cannot build community without conflict. The issue is not to be without conflict, but to be able to resolve conflict, and the commitment to community is what gives us the inspiration … that critical exchange can take place without diminishing anyone’s spirit, that conflict can be resolved constructively. This will not necessarily be a simple process. (Brosi and hooks, 2012, p. 76)

Despite the positives that were seen in the delivery of restorative practice through coaching, it was not devoid of flaws. Returning to hooks’s (2000) description of love as a ‘combination of care, commitment, knowledge, responsibility, respect, and trust’ (p. 131), some students highlighted that they had felt a sense of betrayal when disclosures were passed on; as suggested by hooks (2000), trust and respect are key elements of love. However, she also foregrounds the importance of care, knowledge and responsibility. As such, disclosures made in the context of a trusting student relationship sometimes require a teacher to violate that trust when their responsibility to act based on potentially harmful knowledge is apparent. Teaching with love in relation to safeguarding requires healthy boundaries to be set within the student–teacher relationship to enable the key elements of love – care, knowledge and responsibility – to come to the fore. This is not to say that issues of power and privacy are not cause for criticism when considering restorative practice through coaching at Auden Downs, with adultist agendas (Vaandering, 2010) through safeguarding impacting on students who may have legitimate reasons to withhold information in school. Here the tensions and informed choices that social pedagogy draws our attention to (Rothuizen and Harbo, 2017) need to be recognised. However, the balance between the ‘value aligned interactions’ – the requirement to keep staff and students ‘psychologically safe’ (Coaching Lead) – and the limits of the social discipline window (Wachtel, 2013) become apparent; sometimes things have to be done ‘to’ and ‘for’ rather than ‘with’, particularly in the context of safeguarding.

Students also highlighted the difficulty of losing trusted coaches. Again, hooks’s (2000) definition of love is useful here, as clearly those students felt that key elements of care and commitment were violated through the loss of their coach. This critique is less easy to refute than disclosures made in the context of safeguarding. Sometimes teachers need to move on for a variety of reasons. However, the way that this transition is handled by the organisation and the individual coach – with transparency and sufficient opportunities for closure – is key to ensuring that any sense of betrayal does not become a developmental wound. But perhaps more than any critique of organisational responses to staff and student transition, the difficulty students experienced through the loss of a trusted coach highlights the ‘exercise of Bildung [as] a relational practice’ (Moss and Petrie, 2019, p. 401) alongside the accuracy of hooks’ (2003) call for a pedagogy based on community, hope and love.

Finally, the limits of coaching to pick up every safeguarding case has been noted by Smyth et al. (2011), who identify the issue of young carers that ‘remain “hidden” and beyond the reach of services and supports’ (p. 145) through a lack of self-identification. While it is beyond the scope of this analysis, future research exploring ways to support disclosures in school from this highly vulnerable cohort is urgently required.

The transformative potential of restorative practice through coaching in Auden Downs was realised through the value placed on creating the conditions for positive peace (Bevington and Gregory, 2018) in school. The pro-social skills required to undertake a restorative conversation were explicitly taught and practised within the secure family base of the vertically structured CGs. These carefully composed groups represented sites of unity within diversity (hooks, 2003) that reduced social and age-related barriers between students across the whole school. As a result, conflict became a learning opportunity that was pre-emptively planned for (Hibbin, 2023; McCluskey et al., 2008) rather than something to be actively avoided and supressed, and blame was reframed to support a collective path to reconciliation and repair (McNamee and Gergen, 1999; Wilson and Wilson, 1998).

Alongside the dialogical requirements of restorative practice through coaching, there are important associations between hooks’s (2003; Brosi and hooks, 2012) teachings around conflict, forgiveness and reconciliation, and the respect and care elements of hooks’s (2000) definition of love, that are a primary focus here; it is these associations that link in with the sense of community created at Auden Downs in fundamental ways. In addition, hooks’s (Brosi and hooks, 2012) notion of beloved community was upheld through the horizontal and strongly democratic disciplinary system, based on relationship and knowing the child rather than on whose role it was to manage behaviour, creating a distributed network of relational accountability (Hibbin, 2023) where everyone took responsibility for behaviour. Overall, restorative practice through coaching at Auden Downs represented a challenge to the politics of domination (hooks, 1994, 2003), resulting in an increased emphasis on forgiveness, reconciliation and bonding across difference (Brosi and hooks, 2012).

Students were an explicit part of the whole process, resulting in a transgression of the banking system of education (hooks, 1994, 2003) and affirmation of agency through relationship with others in community through the social discipline window (Wachtel, 2013). Here, ‘those boundaries that would confine each pupil to a rote, assembly-line approach to learning’ (hooks, 1994, p. 13) were crossed. In their place ‘education as the practice of freedom’ was upheld and ‘unity within diversity’ was inculcated (Brosi and hooks, 2012; hooks, 2003), with the mutual respect established through the secure family base of the CG supporting students to see difference and critical exchange as essential elements of reconciliation, community and love.