Student agency in restorative justice: interrogating structural transformation at one predominantly Black American high school

Restorative justice (RJ) is a way of approaching community-building that frames wrong-doing as relational harm, rather than a violation of institutional rules. It is being adopted more in schools in the United States as a response to the hyper-disciplining targeted at Black students and other marginalized populations. We argue that if educators conceive of RJ as an adult-centric intervention, it risks losing its transformative, community-making potential. Student agency and leadership must be understood as central to RJ, particularly to transform schools into antiracist communities. Using qualitative data from a transformative research collaboration, we apply theories of agency and structures (Sewell, 1992) to reveal how one predominantly Black school transitioning to a restorative paradigm both created and constrained opportunities for student agency. We suggest that student agency creates (and is created by) new schema that can support the transformative nature of a restorative paradigm shift. Specifically, we suggest that in one predominantly Black high school, the restorative paradigm, when enacted well, supported new conceptualizations of students as (1) co-constructors of their community and (2) politically conscious actors.