Date of Award

Spring 5-2018

Degree Type

Dissertation

Degree Name

Ph.D.

Degree Program

Educational Administration

Department

Educational Administration

Major Professor

Broadhurst, Christopher

Second Advisor

Beabout, Brian

Third Advisor

Speaker, Richard

Fourth Advisor

Jeffers, Elizabeth

Abstract

Student conduct plays an integral role in the functioning of an institution and the moral development of students. As multiple models of student conduct exist, such as the Model Student Conduct Code or a Restorative Justice Approach, it is critical to have an understanding of the various structures and how to choose the most effective structure for addressing the diversifying needs of the campus community. Most college and university campuses use the Model Student Conduct Code (Dannells, 1997) which tends to place a heavy emphasis on authority and is more legalistic which creates an “adversarial environment” (Lowery & Dannells, 2004) on college and university campuses. It can be argued that the traditional student conduct code does not make space for individuals to engage in dialogue and for learning to take place. The focus of this dissertation is to understand the experiences of facilitators as they develop, implement, and use restorative justice models on college and university campuses, which provide a guiding framework for dialogue between victims/harmed parties and offenders/respondents and may be better suited as a means of managing bias and hate-motivated incidents. Restorative practices have been implemented in criminal justice, and K-12 environments and are seen by some as an antidote to overly legalistic campus conduct processes (Karp, 2004). This phenomenological research explores the experiences of individuals who have facilitated a campus-based restorative process and how that experience may impact their view of and the opportunities to improve campus climate through the lens of Critical Race Theory and Models of Moral development. Through this study, conduct and other campus administrators can gain valuable information on how restorative processes are developed, how facilitators gained and maintained institutional support, and how successful facilitators find the process in meeting their goals of student learning. Campus administrators will also gain insight on the perceived effectiveness of restorative practices as a tool for managing incidents of bias and the perception of the campus climate.

Rights

The University of New Orleans and its agents retain the non-exclusive license to archive and make accessible this dissertation or thesis in whole or in part in all forms of media, now or hereafter known. The author retains all other ownership rights to the copyright of the thesis or dissertation.

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