10/06/2025

The Intersection of Restorative Justice Practices and Moral Development

by Courtney Cullen

Image credit: Jack Moreh on StockVault.net

Restorative justice-based practices and educational approaches to academic integrity are more commonly promoted by academic integrity practitioners as better for students. When we use these approaches, the thought is often that we can educate students and convince them to buy into academic integrity as a moral imperative.

Using Neumeister’s (2017) Model of Transformational Change, I looked at how restorative justice-based practices at one institution impacted student perceptions of academic integrity and their moral development. The institution studied used restorative justice-based practices to resolve cases of possible academic misconduct and offered an optional restorative justice-based remediation program for students that acknowledged violating the academic integrity policy. The academic misconduct process has the following stages for students:

1. Email Notice: Students receive an email to their institutional email address that includes the charge against them and relevant evidence from the instructor. The meeting either sets a date/time for a meeting with the instructor or requests student availability to schedule the meeting.
2. Mediation: Students meet with their instructor and a mediator from the academic integrity office to discuss whether a violation of the academic integrity policy took place, and, if it did, they determine an appropriate sanction together. This process is similar to Howard Zehr’s (1990) Victim-Offender Reconciliation Program, where the instructor (victim) and the student (offender) are brought together to have a dialogue about what took place, how it impacted each party, and how to move forward.
3. Remediation Program: This program provides students who are willing to take responsibility for academic misconduct the ability to remediate their student conduct record. The program involves multiple steps:
   1. Online Module
   2. Reflection Essay
   3. Restorative Justice Conference
   4. Personal Learning Objectives

Using the stages of the academic misconduct process, I found that students experience different levels of moral development based on their level of engagement with the academic integrity office. The table below provides a look at the different types of students and their relationship to the academic misconduct process and Remediation Program as a moral disruptor.

Students that disengage and force the academic integrity officers and faculty to propel them through the academic integrity process are called Never Engagers. These students were typically so overwhelmed with the academic misconduct process that they were never able to recognize their role as a participant in academic misconduct. While they may believe that they will not engage in academic misconduct again, it was more for fear of having to go through the academic misconduct process again than for realization that academic misconduct is wrong.

Some students were reluctant to engage with the academic misconduct process beyond the mediation, but they had a different experience. When these students, called Reluctant Engagers, reflected back on their experience, they recognized that they had made a choice that provided them with an unfair advantage over their peers or that they made a poor choice themselves. They recognized academic integrity as a moral decision, and they were beginning to organize their decision-making process based on academic integrity.

Active Engagers were students who began but did not complete the Remediation Program. They were actively engaged in the academic misconduct process, and they could easily identify academic integrity as a moral decision. These students were more aware of what academic integrity meant and the options they had to complete work honestly.

Finally, Transformers were students that went through the entire academic misconduct process and completed the Remediation Program. They reflected on each portion of the academic misconduct process as disrupting the way they thought about themselves in relation to their academic work. Not only were they more self-aware, but these students also had identified steps and developed skills to increase their chances of choosing academic integrity moving forward.

The lessons from this study are that the way students engage with our misconduct processes matter, and the relationships we build with them may influence their moral decision-making in the future. Each interaction with students has the capacity to help them view themselves as more than a cheater, as a part of your institution and community.

References:

This blog is based off research done for the dissertation titled: Two Steps Forward or One Step Back? How Restorative Justice Practices in Academic Misconduct Cases Impact Student Moral Decision-Making. The dissertation was approved, but it is not yet available online.

Neumeister, J. R. (2017). The Model of Transformational Change for Moral Action: A Conceptual Framework to Elevate Student Conduct Practice in Higher Education. Journal of College and Character, 18(2), 97–111. https://doi.org/10.1080/2194587X.2017.1300097

Zehr, H. (2005). Changing lenses: a new focus for crime and justice (3rd edition.). Herald Press.

Courtney Cullen, PhD, is an ICAI Board Member. She works as an assessment practitioner and academic integrity researcher.