Youths’ Evaluations of Teachers’ Punitive and Restorative Responses to Racialized Defiance and Disrespect

Restorative justice, which promotes individual and collective accountability through inclusive dialogue, has been identified as a promising, developmentally supportive alternative to the harmful and inequitably applied punishments of office referrals and suspensions commonly used in U.S. schools. Grounded in social cognitive domain theory, this mixed-methods study investigated racially and ethnically diverse middle and high school students’ (n = 71) judgments and reasoning about restorative and exclusionary responses to minor, subjective student behaviors commonly linked to racial discipline disparities. In interviews, adolescents evaluated student behaviors, teachers’ restorative and exclusionary responses, and the sources of teachers’ authority in hypothetical scenarios where student behaviors may be perceived as defiant or disrespectful. Adolescents consistently judged restorative approaches positively, even when they viewed the behavior as acceptable. In contrast, they judged the exclusionary approach as neutral to negative, granting it more legitimacy when they saw the student’s behavior as less acceptable. Age and vulnerability to racial discipline disproportionality were not significantly associated with adolescents’ judgments. When reasoning about restorative approaches, adolescents were more likely to consider potential outcomes or qualities of the process and were more likely to attribute teachers’ authority to their intentions or personal characteristics. When reasoning about exclusionary approaches, they focused more on whether the punishment was warranted given the student’s behavior and most often attributed teachers’ authority to their positional power. These findings suggest that racialized adolescents may view restorative justice as a legitimate approach to addressing perceived defiance or disrespect and may foster reasoning through a relational framework of accountability. Conversely, exclusionary approaches may be seen as less legitimate and may reinforce retributive frameworks of reasoning about accountability.