School safety committee members’ experiences of participative leadership in addressing xenophobic violence against foreign learners in public high schools

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to explore school safety committee members’ experiences of participative leadership in addressing xenophobic violence against foreign learners in three public high schools in Johannesburg, South Africa. Xenophobic violence continues to be a plague in diverse school environments in South Africa. Educational legislation in South Africa mandates all public high schools to elect a school safety committee. This committee includes relevant stakeholders, who are prescribed by policy to work collaboratively in the management of xenophobic violence. The purpose of this study was to generate empirical information for relevant stakeholders on how they can use effective leadership strategies in order to curb xenophobic violence. Empirically, the study was guided through a combination of the Transformational leadership and Freeman Stakeholder (1984) theoretical lens. The researcher used a qualitative, transcendental, phenomenological case study research design, and data were collected using in-depth interviews and document analysis. The analysis of the data generated revealed that xenophobic violence was not a challenge in one high school, and the participative leadership approach encouraged stakeholder participation. Overall, the research concluded that school principals in the schools that exhibited xenophobic violence were not using the participative leadership approach and that there was a lack of collaborative governance in the sampled schools. Findings of the study further illuminated the dire need for members of the school safety committee to be capacitated to manage xenophobic violence in public high schools.