Restorative justice ideology among High School teachers in Ghana: investigating the role of collectivism and personality

ABSTRACT

Studies on Restorative Justice (RJ) ideology in school settings have largely focused on Western societies, to the neglect of African societies. This means that variables relevant to the Ghanaian setting that might be associated with RJ ideology have not been examined. The current study investigates the association between High School teachers’ Collectivism, Openness to Experience (OE), and their idea of Restoration. Analysis of data from 191 (Male = 128, Female = 63) teachers in Accra indicated that Collectivism and OE both predicted the idea of Restoration. This suggests that both Collectivism and OE are important resources that may help teachers embrace the idea of restoring a student offender to morally acceptable behaviour. This and other findings are discussed.

KEYWORDS:

• Restorative justice (RJ)
• restoration
• collectivism
• Openness to Experience (OE)

Acknowledgments

We express our sincere gratitude to all the heads of the institutions who granted us permission to conduct the study in their schools. Most importantly, we are grateful to all the teachers who participated in this study.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.