Balancing Discipline and Well-Being: Educational Punishment and Restorative Practices in Rural Chinese Primary Schools

Educational punishment, particularly in the context of school discipline, has significant implications for students' academic and psychosocial development. In China, rural primary schools face unique challenges in balancing disciplinary effectiveness with student well-being. This research explores how students in these contexts experience educational punishment, focusing on their cognitive, affective and behavioral reactions. We utilized mixed methods wherein we employed a quantitative survey with qualitative interviews. In total 600 students in grade 4–6 in a public primary school from Jiangsu province, were recruited for this study. The findings show that students tend to comprehend the logic of punishment but feel distinct emotions based on their school performance and their family background. In other words, the more successful students perceive punishments to have value as a learning experience, the less successful students just tend to feel bad or angry. The study recommends that disciplinary interventions should be personalized while incorporating restorative practices and family participation. These results provide important implications for how policymakers and educators may advance more supportive and equitable discipline practices in underresourced schools.