Rethinking the ‘Restorative’: Ethical Relationships in Restorative Practice Naziya O’Reilly Submitted in accordance with the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy The University of Leeds Leeds Trinity University Institute of Childhood and Education April 2020 i Intellectual Property and Publications I, the candidate, confirm that the work submitted is my own and that appropriate credit has been given where reference has been made to the work of others. Parts of this thesis have already been published and are referenced as follows: Chapter 4: Dialogue or Discipline: Exploring Scripted Restorative Practices O’Reilly, N., (2017), ‘From performance to passionate utterance: Rethinking the purpose of restorative conference scripts in schools’, Ethics and Education, Vol. 12, Issue 2, pp. 170 – 183. Chapter 5: Striving for Stories: Disruption and Self-Transformation O’Reilly, N., (2019), ‘Tell me the story: Marginalisation, transformation, and school-based restorative practice’, International Journal of Educational Research, Vol. 94, pp. 158 – 167. This copy has been supplied on the understanding that it is copyright material and that no quotation from the thesis may be published without proper acknowledgement. Assertion of moral rights: The right of Naziya O’Reilly to be identified as Author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. © 2020 The University of Leeds and Naziya O’Reilly ii Acknowledgements ‘It takes a whole village to raise a child’. This was the essay question that had been set as part of the interview process for a place on the PGCE Primary programme. After sixteen years as a teaching professional, I can safely say that it takes an equally sizeable population to raise a PhD thesis. I would not wish to begin my acknowledgements without thinking of the many staff and pupils that have shaped my interest in pursuing educational research. However, my path from the classroom to the University has been an extraordinarily steep learning curve. To that end, I am truly fortunate to have benefited from a few particularly important sources of support. I would like to thank the members of my supervisory team including Dr Ann-Marie Mealey, and Dr Martin Barwood for their intellectual, emotional and material support. While each of them has contributed to the ideas in this thesis, or to helping me over the finish line, it has been the guidance of my primary mentor, Professor Amanda Fulford, that has helped me to piece together, and articulate, my ideas with ever increasing clarity and conviction. Were it not for Professor Fulford’s insistence almost a decade ago, at a time of great frustration, that I engage more deeply with educational philosophy, I would certainly not be writing these words. Her friendship, and intellectual companionship over the years, have afforded me greater opportunities than I would have thought possible. I would like to thank Leeds Trinity University for its financial support, including its generous maternity stipend, that has enabled me to devote my attention to pursuing this project. In doing so, I have been lucky enough to work alongside numerous other doctoral colleagues whom have let me benefit from their valuable intellectual support and build (I hope) life-long friendships. John McCall and Hannah-Freya Blake’s careful readings of this work have made an enormous contribution to its final presentation; Lauren Padgett’s generosity of spirit had us all trying to ‘be more Lauren’; the endless cups of tea and laughter provided by Jordan Beaumont, Liz Mistry, Shames Maskeen and the rest of the PGR community have been priceless through the often-lonely passage of post-graduate research. In this last year, I have also benefitted from the friendship of the wider Philosophy of Education community, including my fellow PESGB branch committee members, Ed Podesta and Professor Julian Stern and Dr Naomi Hodgson. It cannot be underestimated how much belonging to a such a varied community has given me the impetus to complete this project. To all of them I owe my gratitude. It (almost) goes without saying that this would not have been possible were it not for my husband of eleven years, Liam O’Reilly. Cheerleader, therapist, talking partner, devoted father, chief cook and editor; his unwavering support for not only the progress of my academic career, but also my personal health and well-being, has brought us both through what has been a iii difficult start to our life together. I am eternally grateful for you, our children, and this next chapter of our lives. iv Abstract In the fifteen years since restorative practices – an alternative to traditional punitive disciplinary measures – began to have a strong presence in educational thinking in the United Kingdom, research has shown that it holds significant potential as a means for teaching the skills of conflict resolution and nurturing relational school cultures. Nevertheless, there remains widespread concern that restorative practice risks being abandoned or co-opted and used in ways that encourage a lack of agency, increased marginalisation, and disempowerment. The originality of my research into restorative practice lies in locating the source of its anxieties away from current cultural, and instructional work, and explaining it as a deep philosophical mistrust with what we do with language. By placing educational philosophy directly with current theory and practice, this project aspires to re-think notions of what is restorative, seeing the term not as exclusively redemptive but as an engagement that seeks to problematise, even disrupt entirely, what is seen as its purpose. Part I explores the perception of how worsening behaviour in schools is linked to notions of zero tolerance and the performance agenda, and the rise of restorative practices as a response. Part II – comprising three central chapters – considers the key linguistic restorative concepts: restorative language, restorative story-telling and restorative relationships drawing on the work of Stanley Cavell and his reading of Wittgenstein and the American transcendentalist philosophers Ralph Waldo Emerson, and Henry David Thoreau. By opening each chapter in Part II with a scenario from a restorative conference, I show how language that is too strongly guided is ethically harmful to restorative practice’s claims for a relational pedagogy. At the end of this thesis I will make three claims: what it means to be in relation to another, our ongoing ethical relationships with another, and what it means to be in community. v Table of Contents Intellectual Property and Publications .............................................................................. i Acknowledgements ......................................................................................................... ii Abstract .......................................................................................................................... iv Table of Contents ............................................................................................................. v List of Tables and Figures ................................................................................................ ix Abbreviations .................................................................................................................. x Preface .......................................................................................................................... xii PART I Behaviour in Schools ............................................................................................ 1 Chapter 1 The Evolution of Current Thinking Regarding Behaviour in Schools .................. 2 1.1 Introduction ............................................................................................................ 2 1.2 What is Good Behaviour? ....................................................................................... 2 1.2.1 From Inclusion to Performance ................................................................... 3 1.3 Recent Policy Initiatives .......................................................................................... 6 1.3.1 The Teacher Standards ................................................................................ 7 1.3.2 Managing Behaviour Effectively .................................................................. 8 1.3.3 Positive Discipline ........................................................................................ 9 1.4 Good Relationships Matter .................................................................................. 10 1.4.1 The Rise in Psycho-Social Problems .......................................................... 12 1.4.2 Ethical Schools ........................................................................................... 13 1.4.3 Character Education .................................................................................. 13 1.4.4 The Rise of School-Based Restorative Practice ......................................... 15 Chapter 2 Notions of Restorative Justice and Restorative Practice ................................. 17 2.1 Mapping the Field: Restorative Justice ................................................................ 17 2.1.1 Defining Restorative Justice ...................................................................... 17 2.1.2 Origins of Restorative Justice .................................................................... 20 2.1.3 Personal Testimony: Circles, Conferences