Restorative justice as transformative practice in physical education scholarship
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 21784087 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Michael A Hemphill (0000-0002-4929-9774, University of North Carolina at Greensboro, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2025 |
| Pages | 1-15 |
| Publication date | 2025-06-10 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | No |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Physical Education and Sport Pedagogy (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 1740-8989 • E-ISSN: 1742-5786 |
| Publisher | Informa UK Limited (PUBLISHER • GB) |
| DOI | 10.1080/17408989.2025.2514115 |
| OpenAlex | W4411176309 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 3 |
| References cited | 19 |
This paper reflects the prepared remarks from a keynote address to the 2024 AIESEP conference in Jyväskylä, Finland. The presentation focused on restorative justice in physical education, framed around three essential questions: (1) who has been harmed in physical education, (2) what are their needs?, and (3) whose obligations are these. Drawing on the three pillars of restorative justice – harms, needs, and obligations – I describe how restorative justice practices can be utilised in physical education programs.The presentation outlines the status of restorative justice as it has evolved from indigenous practices, use in criminal justice systems, and its current growth in education contexts. Restorative justice in education has shown promise for resolving conflicts and addressing curricular objectives but has been plagued by mis-implementation models that undermine the justice-orientation. To avoid this pitfall, I offer four pedagogical stances to approaching restorative justice pedagogy. The stances insist that we reflect on things that matter in education including history, race, justice, and language.I describe how the use of pedagogical stances is used to provide a justice orientation in an alternative physical education program that I direct in Greensboro, North Carolina. I conclude that educators focus most of their attention on interpersonal harm but there are in fact three types of harm for us to consider including interpersonal, institutional, and systemic. These three types of harm intersect and provide a more complex framework for us to consider when we encounter conflict and harm.I conclude that there are a variety of harms and needs that are evident in physical education although they are not commonly identified in our scholarly discourse. Therefore, it is our obligation, individually and collectively, to understand and respond to the harm caused in physical education
Criminology · Economic Justice · Engineering ethics · Pedagogy · Political science · Restorative justice · Scholarship · Sociology · Transformative learning · Engineering · Inclusion and Disability in Education and Sport · Law · Physical Education and Pedagogy · Sports, Gender, and Society
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| Unique citing works | 3 |
|---|---|
| Citations per year | 3 |
| Citation span | 2026 - 2026 (1) |
| Citation velocity | current |
| Highly cited | No |
| Citation types | Neutral: 3 |