Practitioner Perspectives on a Restorative Community: An Inductive Evaluative Study of Conceptual, Pedagogical, and Routine Practice

The purpose of this study is to explore restorative practice (RP) within education, highlighting practitioner views from an inductive evaluative perspective. This is in response to the suggested ambiguity over what constitutes RP in education. Practitioner perspectives are explored, providing an insight into an established restorative school. New data offer further clarity on RP in education by describing embedded practice and highlighting sites for further specific task analysis. Methods include semi-structured questionnaires in the form of employee practice statements, situated within insider research. Eleven practice statements were completed, which were then subject to in-depth thematic analysis. The main findings of this study suggest that RP is clearly understood in this educational setting and participants described a wholistic approach that is part of a wider culture, not just practice as an intervention. Analysis suggests that this can be categorised into the following three themes: Conceptual, Pedagogical and Routine Practice. When used alongside one another, it is suggested that these themes create a restorative paradigm, which is of relevance to the field of education. As such, this paper is designed to provide a useful resource for schools, policy makers and researchers alike.

Insiders Dissected - New Foundations and a Systematisation of the Research on Insiders

The insider threat is often cited as one of the most challenging threats for security practitioners. Even though this topic is receiving considerable attention, two main problems remain unsolved. First, research on insider threats is focusing on many different insiders without being able to actually identify and consistently entitle the key aspects of the insiders. As a result, this research can neither be identified by practitioners as being relevant for their real-world insider problems, nor can it be compared with other research targeting the same insider aspects. Second, a clear understanding of insiders is vital for analysing, which insider properties are responsible for the peculiarity of insider threats. In this paper, a systematic approach to dissect the defining aspects of insiders is proposed, which includes specific allocatable insider characteristics. Additionally, the insider characteristics are extended towards insider types, which establish universal and unambiguous names for different insiders, and which are related with each other to form a new and simple insider taxonomy. The new foundations on insiders allow the comparison of different insider research in a structured manner. Furthermore, the new approach facilitates the identification of specific features of insider threats in future work.

Model of Mitigation: Strategies to Utilise Unique Insider Research Opportunities

Insider research has in the past challenged researchers in terms of blurred lines, objectivity, bias confidentiality and maintaining professional working relationships. The opportunities it presents however include access to information, trust in the data collection, insider and intimate knowledge, and the ability for rich inside data collection. This paper discusses these opportunities and challenges, then makes recommendations for ten strategies to assist in data collection by an insider researcher. These strategies include communication, mixed methods, reflections, debrief, distance, confidentiality, interview technique, social network, voluntary and objectivity. The research concludes with the creation of a Model of Mitigation, which posits the ten mitigation strategies along with the four opportunities to assist insider researchers to overcome obstacles when conducting insider research, as insider research has been shown to collect rich data and enable organisations to reflect on the research findings and to implement recommendations made on an individual but organisation wide basis.

Fānanaua: Ethics education in an indigenous Solomon Islands clan

A key reason for many leadership development programmes in Pacific Islands countries is to teach ethics to Pacific Islands leaders. However, as interventions, these programmes are exclusively reliant on Western ideas about ethics and ethics education. To counter such impositions, this paper discusses the nature of indigenous clan ethics and how ethics education is undertaken in an indigenous Solomon Islands clan. Based on an insider-research project of the Gula'alā people of the Solomon Islands, the paper reports on the differences of indigenous ethics education to how ethics is taught, as reported in the global literature and seen in leadership development programmes in Pacific Islands countries.

Navigeren in het onderzoeksveld en het onderzoekersveld: reflecties op onderzoekspositionaliteit in (vermeend) insideronderzoek

Navigating the research and researchers’ field: Reflections on positionality in (assumed) insider research To challenge rigid ideas about objectivity in social science research, qualitative researchers question their own subjectivity in the research process. In such endeavors, the focus is mainly on the positionality of the researcher vis-à-vis their respondents in the research field. In this contribution, I argue that the positionality of the researcher in academia, what I refer to as the researchers’ field, is equally important as it influences the way research findings are received and evaluated. Through reflections on positionality in my insider research concerning labour relations and exploitation in Chinese migrant businesses in the Netherlands and Romania, I explore how my positionality as an insider negatively influenced my credibility and approachability in the researchers’ field. I conclude that it is necessary to pay more attention to researchers’ positionality in academia as it may shed light on and make it possible to discuss the written and unwritten standards of researchers’ credibility and approachability as an academic in the researchers’ field. Accordingly, this could provide insights into the causes of inequalities in academia and contribute to the current challenge for more diversity in academia.

Qualitative Insider Research in a Government Institution: Reflections on a Study of Policy Capacity

Embarking on a qualitative Ph.D. research project in public administration is often daunting for novice researchers. For those students who consider adopting an emic or insider approach for their research, the ethical, methodological, and analytical challenges that lay ahead may seem insurmountable at times. In this article, I reflect on my experience as a Ph.D. student completing qualitative research with my colleagues to study policy capacity in a provincial government in Canada. I review how I constructed an ethical framework by integrating policy from Research Ethics Boards and government. Throughout the article, I deal primarily with ethical considerations and the personal and professional tensions associated with insider research. In addition to providing an overview of the literature on insider and emic research, I present ethical protocols that student-practitioners in other settings should consider when completing academic research with their colleagues in government institutions. Overall, the risks one must mitigate and minimize when completing insider research in government institutions are not substantially different from insider research in private institutions. While insider approaches in the study of public administration are not without their unique challenges, they do offer great potential in broadening and deepening emic knowledge of public administration practice.

Fānanaua

A key reason for many leadership development programmes in Pacific Islands countries is to teach ethics to Pacific Islands leaders. However, as interventions, these programmes are exclusively reliant on Western ideas about ethics and ethics education. To counter such impositions, this paper discusses the nature of indigenous clan ethics and how ethics education is undertaken in an indigenous Solomon Islands clan. Based on an insider-research project of the Gula'alā people of the Solomon Islands, the paper reports on the differences of indigenous ethics education to how ethics is taught, as reported in the global literature and seen in leadership development programmes in Pacific Islands countries.

Fānanaua

A key reason for many leadership development programmes in Pacific Islands countries is to teach ethics to Pacific Islands leaders. However, as interventions, these programmes are exclusively reliant on Western ideas about ethics and ethics education. To counter such impositions, this paper discusses the nature of indigenous clan ethics and how ethics education is undertaken in an indigenous Solomon Islands clan. Based on an insider-research project of the Gula'alā people of the Solomon Islands, the paper reports on the differences of indigenous ethics education to how ethics is taught, as reported in the global literature and seen in leadership development programmes in Pacific Islands countries.