A Restorative Approach to Online Learning

The Background

I’ve worked in further and secondary education for just over 20 years, I now run a learning community called Brightlink Learning and we work restoratively, taking a restorative approach to everything we do, including online learning.

I am originally by profession a law teacher. I trained to be a solicitor but fell in love with teaching  after giving it a try during my post grad year. I went on to teach and to lead teaching and learning across a number of subjects, disciplines and ages at a large inner city College.

Why a Restorative Approach?

The college I worked at had always followed some aspects of restorative practice but it wasn’t fully embedded throughout the organisation and everything we did.

When I was tasked with creating community outreach provision and building a team for that work, I was asked to find and work with people who may not otherwise be able to access learning. This included people aged 3 to 93, those who had been excluded from learning or left it by choice. Those who had been detained by the justice system, street and parlour based sex workers, the homeless and those who misuse substances among others.

 We were embarking on work with some of the most harmed people in our society, those who had experienced abuse, neglect and more things than most of us can imagine. I knew I needed a framework and approach to engage and work with everyone, truly work with them, not impose anything on them, not make assumptions about what they need and how they might meet those needs or how we could help them to meet their needs. And we needed to have an impact, this was often a last chance for these individuals to engage with any kind of education in their lives. We couldn’t blow it.

After much searching and research I realised a restorative approach was the way to do this. We recruited, trained and worked wholly restoratively. We adopted no additional behaviour measures or disciplinary methods. We engaged with hundreds of people. Our standard education measures were all significantly above national averages for these groups. These people put incredible work into changing their lives, I was privileged to work with them and have wonderful memories of everyone I met through that work.

The key take away for me in respect of the restorative approach was the incredible transformative impact it had on learning and on people’s lives. The evidence I saw that it worked like nothing else had or could.

When Social engagement was shut down within the institution I worked in, I began working as a consultant on the set up of a social enterprise formed to be a hub for restorative approaches, designing and facilitating training and restorative practices.

An Evolution of Online Learning

Long before I knew what a restorative approach was or rather that it had a name to work that way, to be that way, I began working with online learning, in around 2005. It was a very basic approach technically speaking back then, it was a project in collaboration with the local authority centred initially around an individual learner with profound disabilities. This learner had limited mobility, short term memory challenges and no speech, she desperately wanted to study for a law A level but did not find it possible to attend classes at that time. We found ways to work together online while still keeping things engaging and interesting and still feeling connected despite being physically apart.

The online learning became a gentle introduction to find her confidence and motivation and she went on to join a course that she attended full time.

The technology at my disposal to work with learners online and my understanding of how to use it have developed over time, my inspiration and motivation has always been the same though. Accessible, nurturing, remarkable learning for all.  

There are many reasons why learners can be unable to access or are actively excluded from traditional learning methods which require attendance at a specific place and time. This exclusion can be specific, implied or by default. Something different can be needed by someone who must work, for example and cannot spare time to study by attendance. Attending a place of learning is sometimes not an option for someone who suffers severe illness or who is disabled. It’s not right as a starting point for someone who suffers with crippling anxiety and is unable to leave home or be with groups of people. Its also a route denied to many full time carers and other factors like poverty, abuse, trafficking and homelessness can exclude people practically, socially and financially from learning.

In 2008 I established a worldwide elearning platform for professional legal study and then began Brightlink in 2014 . We do the majority of our work online or via a blended approach. We have online learning materials and experiences and we combine the convenience of technology with the connection of people power.

As a team we all worked restoratively with each other from the outset, our business is values based. I realised while working with my team to design the best learning experiences we could, that we could and should merge these two working methods, restorative approaches and online learning to provide the best learning community and experiences.  

How We Are Bringing Restorative Approaches to Online Learning

You may have heard of restorative approaches, you may even work restoratively. I often find there is still some lack of awareness and misunderstanding on what a restorative approach is and how it can be transformative in many walks of life, including education.

You might have heard of restorative justice and think of that when you hear the word restorative. That in its simplest terms is often known as the bringing together of people where a crime has occurred and harm has been done. Restorative justice is just one tool in the restorative approaches tool box. Restorative is not something we do, it’s everything we are and everything we do. A way of being rather than a way of doing.

As a relational approach it is of course best practiced together, sharing space, listening intently, sharing words, thoughts and feelings and observing visual and audio cues to avoid any misunderstanding and benefit from full transparency.

If COVID-19 has shown us anything it’s that we don’t always have control over who we share space with, we don’t always get to choose to be in the same place with someone. That doesn’t mean we need high support and high challenge any less. It doesn’t mean that we don’t need to somehow be beside each other in learning. Our minds are remarkable and can imply nearness and connection and derive the benefits  if we make efforts to be together by any means and build and nurture relationships. So we can work restoratively online and we should, it makes all the difference.

Nurturing the social animals that we are by sharing learning experiences with somebody enhances our learning and its application, when people power is combined with technology, we can do this without losing any of the convenience technology brings to education.

Good learning management systems combine forums, notice boards, access to written materials, live streaming, film, audio and downloadable resources for learning and assessment. They include opportunities to regularly see and hear others in an interactive setting, to discuss and ask questions, to check on their wellbeing, their progress and share their developing thoughts and perspectives. When things are done well, this is all surrounded by a wrap-around of quick, responsive and anticipatory administration and pastoral care, that might include things like calendar integration, real time booking, live chat, mobile telephone and email response and maybe even Artificial Intelligence in some settings.

The restorative principles are;

1.   Restoration

2.   Voluntarism

3.   Neutrality

4.   Safety

5.   Accessibility

6.   Respect

There are a wide range of tools and techniques at our disposal when working restoratively and if you haven’t already, I can highly recommend 5 days of training from a reputable organisation who are fully quality assured and endorsed by the Restorative Justice Council. People who will travel the road to restorative with you and model and coach as well as train. It’s vital to have the approach embedded throughout your policy, to undergo total culture change and paradigm shift and to allow a number of years for this to develop and fully embed. This is when you begin to see the full extent of the impact a restorative approach can have on learning. This is when you can see a genuine learning community formed around a shared framework of values, language, tools and techniques.

Improved staff and learner engagement, reduced sickness absence, improved safety, zero exclusions, 100% inclusion, enhanced vulnerability awareness and improved assessment grades are just some of the improvements that you will see, in fact better outcomes by all measures.

Some of the ways that we can be seen working within and towards the restorative ethos at Brightlink are our interactions, our language, our structure and our work with each other as well as with our learners.

Here are just a few examples of how it works and what it looks like when we work restoratively online:

Check ins and check outs

When we work restoratively, check ins and check outs are one of the ways we manage to stay connected even though we’re physically apart. We’re still building great relationships when we do this.

If we were sitting in the same space we’d be sat in a circle and using a talking piece. The person holding the talking piece would talk and everyone else would listen.

Online as we can’t always see each other fully, we’ll do a full go around to each person still but the facilitator of the meeting or workshop will say each name where there are more than two participants in a conversation, to invite people to speak. We use Zoom for our meetings and workshops currently and we utilise the chat box to include the questions we use for go arounds so people can see them and prepare and then remember them when it’s their turn to speak, this enables people not to feel afraid to speak and to really use their listening skills rather than trying to remember what they’re being asked.

We check in to find out who we are with and how they are. To get to know each other and to connect our thoughts and feelings. It helps us to be present in the moment, to focus and begin. Whether it’s beginning a workshop or a meeting or beginning a day or week.

Checking out is a way to get closure, to relive the best bits of an activity/ day or week and then to move forwards. It’s a great way to end a week and get ready for the weekend too, we use this in our current response to COVID the Home Working Network, with some lovely results.

We check out of every meeting, lesson or training session and then we also check out of the working week. The check out helps everyone with consolidation, summary, recall and with closure.

This sets us apart, we’re not just putting out pre recordings and keeping people at arms length. We’re not including hundreds of people in an online webinar and speaking at them. Everyone is participating and interacting, they get to avoid isolation, to know that others are in similar situations to them and they get to hear lots of perspectives as well as their own on what they’re learning.

They know we care about how they are because we ask them every time we’re in touch with them and we really listen to the response.

Here’s another example – the needs exercise.

Each time a new learner joins us we have a chat with them and we ask them what they need to give their best to their learning. They need to know us as people and recognise that we have needs too so we also tell them what we need to give our best in teaching or facilitating their learning.

These needs from both sides inspire the opportunity to talk about the situation we’re in, to meet people where they are in their learning and in their lives. We can be really clear about expectations and manage them.

This exercise forms the basis of the learning agreement that everyone can refer to when they learn with us. It makes their learning a unique experience to them and it encourages self-reliance and resilience. It’s made clear that only we can meet our own needs and sometimes others can help us to do that but they can’t do it for us. It’s a great way to develop independent learners. People will rise to the occasion when we place our trust in them and recognise that they are the experts in their own lives and their own learning. They’ll teach us more than we teach them.

There are many ways you can see how a restorative approach to online learning can be implemented in what we do, but these are just a couple of examples that you could try for yourself.

Ultimately, remember that relationships are at the heart of everything and especially good learning. Whether that’s taking place between people next to each other in the same room or on other sides of the world.

https://brightlink.org.uk

connect@brightlink.org.uk

02921 888386