TY - JOUR
T1 - Tokenism and barriers to genuine learner participation in school governance in one progressive South African girls’ high school
AU - Yu, Ke
AU - Yu, Charissa Shay
N1 - Publisher Copyright:
© 2022, South African Journal Of Education. All rights reserved.
PY - 2022
Y1 - 2022
N2 - Borrowing the participation level typology from civic participation literature, in the study reported on here, we explored the level of learner participation in school governance in 1 girls’ high school in South Africa. We demonstrate that despite the schools’ self-claimed progressive stance, its learner participation still exhibits numerous nuanced examples of tokenism. Using a qualitative research design and purposive sampling, we collected data from interviews and observation to examine the possible causes for, as well as consequences of this tokenism. The findings indicate that adults’ beliefs about minors’ limited capacity remain a structural barrier to learners’ genuine participation. This belief threatens the credibility and legitimacy of the Representative Council of Learners (RCL) and this threat to legitimacy, in turn, reinforces the structural beliefs that adults hold and thus perpetuates a cycle whereby genuine participation is compromised and token participation is entrenched. We conclude this article with recommendations to address, mitigate and transcend token participation.
AB - Borrowing the participation level typology from civic participation literature, in the study reported on here, we explored the level of learner participation in school governance in 1 girls’ high school in South Africa. We demonstrate that despite the schools’ self-claimed progressive stance, its learner participation still exhibits numerous nuanced examples of tokenism. Using a qualitative research design and purposive sampling, we collected data from interviews and observation to examine the possible causes for, as well as consequences of this tokenism. The findings indicate that adults’ beliefs about minors’ limited capacity remain a structural barrier to learners’ genuine participation. This belief threatens the credibility and legitimacy of the Representative Council of Learners (RCL) and this threat to legitimacy, in turn, reinforces the structural beliefs that adults hold and thus perpetuates a cycle whereby genuine participation is compromised and token participation is entrenched. We conclude this article with recommendations to address, mitigate and transcend token participation.
KW - learner participation
KW - legitimacy
KW - representative council of learners
KW - school governance
KW - school governing body
KW - token participation
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85146891925&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.15700/saje.v42n4a2115
DO - 10.15700/saje.v42n4a2115
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:85146891925
SN - 0256-0100
VL - 42
JO - South African Journal of Education
JF - South African Journal of Education
IS - 4
M1 - 2115
ER -