Restorative Justice in Education: Transforming Teaching and Learning Through the Disciplines

Restorative Justice in Education makes the case for restorative justice as a practice as much as it is a paradigm. Through essays, case studies, and interviews, the book outlines for educators and teacher educators how restorative justice can be leveraged to teach across disciplines.

Building on the success of Justice on Both Sides, this book consists of four sections that explore instructional practices in history, race, justice, and language. The contributors examine a variety of educational issues and questions for teachers to explore through a transformative justice lens. Topics include how access to history and histories can promote agency for and among marginalized students; how science and mathematics education can be reimagined to catalyze the creativity and capacity of Black math learners; and how restorative justice practices can foster healthy student identities.

The book includes the voices of leading practitioners and scholars, who address the need for both restorative and transformative justice work within, across, and beyond the core disciplines. Particular attention is given to areas of education often omitted from these conversations: early childhood, special education, and ethnic studies.

Restorative Justice in Education offers educators the pedagogical tools they need to transform their classrooms into just, inclusive, and uplifting spaces.

Maisha T. Winn is the associate dean and Chancellor’s Leadership Professor in the School of Education at the University of California, Davis, where she cofounded and codirects the Transformative Justice in Education (TJE) Center. Much of Professor Winn’s early scholarship examines how young people create literate identities through performing literacy and how teachers who are “practitioners of the craft” serve as “soul models” to emerging writers. Winn served as the Jeannette K. Watson Distinguished Visiting Professor in the Humanities at Syracuse University (2019–20). She is the author of several books including Writing in Rhythm: Spoken Word Poetry in Urban Schools, Black Literate Lives: Historical and Contemporary Perspectives (both published under maiden name, Fisher); Girl Time: Literacy, Justice, and the School-to-Prison Pipeline; coeditor of Humanizing Research: Decolonizing Qualitative Research (with Django Paris); Justice on Both Sides: Transforming Education Through Restorative Justice (Harvard Education Press), and Restorative Justice in the English Language Arts Classroom (with Hannah Graham and Rita Alfred). She is also the author of numerous articles in peer-reviewed journals, including Review of Research in Education; Anthropology and Education Quarterly; International Journal of Qualitative Studies in Education; Race, Ethnicity and Education; Research in the Teaching of English; and Harvard Educational Review.

Lawrence “T.” Winn (PhD, Human Ecology, University of Wisconsin, Madison; MDiv, Princeton; JD, Vanderbilt University Law School; and BA, University of California, Berkeley) is an assistant professor of teaching in education in the School of Education at the University of California, Davis and the cofounder and executive director of the Transformative Justice in Education (TJE) Center. His program of research examines race, critical consciousness, and social capital in out-of-school learning spaces and transformative justice pedagogy and practice within schools. A trained ethnographer, Dr. Winn is interested in the relationship and dynamics between historically marginalized communities of color (BIPOC) and schools, nonprofits, and government entities such as police, elected officials, and so on. With over two decades of experience in the nonprofit sector, including projects with Casey Family Programs and the Annie E. Casey Foundation, Dr. Winn was a member of the Race to Equity Team (R2E), which published the Race to Equity report, a comprehensive study on racial disparities in education, criminal justice, workforce, and health care for Black and white families in Dane County, Wisconsin. He is the coauthor of articles that have appeared in Theory into Practice, Race and Social Problems, and Adolescent Research Review.