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What Is Known About Rj Professional Development.As Discussed

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What is Known about RJ Professional Development As discussed previously, one of the challenges to the implementation of RJ is staff buy-in and shared vision. How professionals, including teachers, administration, support staff as well as students and parents are prepared to implement restorative practices can be vital to the success of this initiative. Vaandering (2014) suggests that how RJ professional development (PD) is presented is important to consider. It can and should, she believes, embody the very philosophical foundation that RJ is built upon, however it is not uncommon for RJ PD to be given in a way that reinforces hierarchical power rather than the democratic, empowering relationships it espouses. Scripted transmission …show more content…

One reason this occurs is from a scarcity of funding. Mirsky (2007) describes a school where the teachers were divided into three classes based in their perceived receptivity to RP; believers, fence sitters and critics. Teachers who were considered believers were trained first, then the fence sitters were trained with support from the believers and finally the rest of the staff was trained which, she explained, allowed time for many of the critics to retire or leave. Other schools that began training small groups did so either using teachers who volunteered, who were recommended due to their strong relationships with students or were members of school based leadership teams. Whether from a lack of funding, or a desire to develop a core group of motivated, philosophically in sync teachers, the PD delivery system of train the trainers is frequently used. In Scotland, this is also called cascading and according to those teachers, is not as effective, Being trained by a trainer who is often a peer is not felt to be the same quality as being trained by the original trainer (Lloyd et al, 2009). Overall, the majority of training was given by outside consultants. Most frequently named were trainers licensed by the International Institute of Restorative Practices (IIRP) based in Pennsylvania. Other presenters were the researchers themselves (Cavanagh, Vigil & Garcia, 2014; Vaandering, 2009), district coordinators, or the School Board. One study

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