Abstract
This study places its focus on teacher learning about restorative justice in conversations
with peers. It is through a qualitative approach, interpretivist and ethnomethodological
research design that I believe I would gain insight into the views of teachers on their
learning on restorative justice as peers during their conversations. I also aimed to
describe their conversational patterns emanating from within their conversation, meaning,
how their conversation is organised and structured while using conversation analysis as
an approach.
The participants responded to the question, via a discussion, what their learnings were
about restorative justice as peers while implementing in school? The conversation was
video recorded, later transcribed verbatim, coded and verified through discussion with the
researcher, peers and supervisor. Data was analyzed by means of both content and
conversation analysis.
Findings from the content of the conversations reveal that senior learners benefit more
from restorative justice that the junior learners. The junior learners see restorative justice
more as something they can “get away” with because there are no consequences that
they expect from the process of restorative justice. They would expect punitive
consequences such as detention and or more homework as punishment. The findings
further shoed that the conversations emanating from the restorative justice processes are
of immense value for both the implementing teachers and the learners involved in
conflictual situations. The study also identified conversational findings that highlighted the
importance of the informal nature of the conversational activity which was natural.
Additionally, the findings also brought forth the nature of the casual conversation
influenced the pattern of the turn taking sequences as they were self-selected by the
participants and this allowed freedom in the conversation. This free atmosphere resulted
in participants building on each other’s comments and extending conversational
sequences by latching onto the previous comments...
M.Ed. (Psychology of Learning)