Tokenism and barriers to genuine learner participation in school governance in one progressive South African girls’ high school

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.