Restorative approaches in educational settings

As the use of Restorative Justice (RJ) becomes more widespread in Europe so the interest in the application of restorative values, skills and processes to other settings continues to spread. Perhaps the setting in which there has been most interest in recent years is in schools. Both authors of the paper have been involved in this field for many years, as practitioners, trainers, developers, writers and researchers. Both share case studies from their own experience in Finland and in the UK respectively. In Finland the use of school mediation is set within the wider context of the Finnish commitment to offering mediation to all Finnish citizens. In the UK there is not this national commitment, nor a national infrastructure for offering mediation and other restorative responses. However certain schools lead the way in their commitment over many years to transforming the whole school culture and the way both adults and young people interact and relate with each other on a daily basis.