Conferencing can be employed by schools in response to wrongdoing, truancy, disciplinary incidents, including violence, or as a prevention strategy in the form of role plays of conferences with primary and secondary school students. In workplaces, conferences address both wrongdoing and conflict.
Restorative practices are a continuum of research based informal and formal strategies to develop community in schools where adults do things WITH youth rather than TO or FOR them. As a prevention and intervention approach to discipline, restorative practices provide an alternative to suspension and can integrate into a school’s multi-tiered system of behavioral supports.