This booklet explores the nature of participation, representation and decision-making in school governance in South Africa based on a collective case-study of six schools in Gauteng and KwaZulu-Natal (KZN) that was undertaken between 2002 and 2004. The different types of schools were compared by the following criteria: their interpretation of the new governance policies; students', teachers', and parents' behavior and attitudes relating to governance; and organizational governance practices. The main focus was on stakeholders' sense-making or theories of action regarding school governance. The terrain of the research for this book is the change or lack thereof in governance structures brought about by the South African Schools Act (SASA). The research focused on contextual variations, continuities and discontinuities, processes of mediation and conflict, conceptual tensions and varying interests, historical legacies, and individual interpretations that influence schools' responses to external policies and central mandates. In exploring key assumptions in the governance discourse, this book suggests that governance policy in practice is constituted by the interaction of implementing agents' theories of action, the context of the school, the administrative context, and policy signals. Research Methodology is appended. (Contains 5 tables and 2 figures.)