Solution Focused Discipline Strategies and Restorative Justice

Outline:

Schools are organisations with a high set of values and standards. Every school has their own ethos and ethical code of conduct that learners need to adhere to. However, as we all know, not all learners abide by these rules. This often leaves the school with the difficult task of how to discipline these indiscretions. Old punitive ways of what happened, who is to blame and how to punish children are no longer the norm. New and effective ways of discipline needs to be put in place and Solution Focused principles and the concept of restorative justice work well together and can serve as an effective and structured way of discipline. Solution Focused principles focus of the best hopes for the situation, looking at what is not working and encouraging children to do things differently. Restorative justice aims to restore the well being of victims, offenders and communities and to prevent further offending. This workshop looks at combining Solution Focused principles with the restorative justice approach and giving schools an alternative model to handling misdemeanours. This workshop will focus on the principle of confidentiality, will teach the conversation rule of respect, will address what happened and who has been affected, will enable the teacher to set goals and explore how we can right the wrong and will also enable the learners to come up with ideas of what to do differently in the future.