You are asking Jackson to parse a StudentList. Tell it to parse a List (of students) instead. Since List is generic you will typically use a TypeReference

List<Student> participantJsonList = mapper.readValue(jsonString, new TypeReference<List<Student>>(){});

You have to create another class say Output as

import java.util.List;

public class Output {
    public List<Token> getTokens() {
        return tokens;
    }

    public void setTokens(List<Token> tokens) {
        this.tokens = tokens;
    }

    private List<Token> tokens;
}

and then use

Output output = new Gson().fromJson(json, Output.class);

then you can use output to get list of tokens and go further for suggestion etc

Using gson it is much simpler. Use following code snippet:

 // create a new Gson instance
 Gson gson = new Gson();
 // convert your list to json
 String jsonCartList = gson.toJson(cartList);
 // print your generated json
 System.out.println("jsonCartList: " + jsonCartList);

Converting back from JSON string to your Java object

 // Converts JSON string into a List of Product object
 Type type = new TypeToken<List<Product>>(){}.getType();
 List<Product> prodList = gson.fromJson(jsonCartList, type);

 // print your List<Product>
 System.out.println("prodList: " + prodList);

You can convert the result to an object list, or you can pass in a type parameter rather than the List class.

String jsonString = "[{\"id\": \"0\", \"ip\": \"123\", \"mac\": \"456\"}, {\"id\": \"1\", \"ip\": \"111\", \"mac\": \"222\"}]";

With Object

List<Object> items = objectMapper.readValue(
    jsonString,
    objectMapper.getTypeFactory().constructParametricType(List.class, Object.class)
);

With SlaveEntity

List<SlaveEntity> items = objectMapper.readValue(
    jsonString,
    objectMapper.getTypeFactory().constructCollectionType(List.class, SlaveEntity.class)
);

Update

This is what I have come up with, and it works.

EntityTest

import java.io.IOException;
import java.util.ArrayList;
import java.util.List;

import com.fasterxml.jackson.databind.ObjectMapper;

public class EntityTest {
    public static void main(String[] args) {
        String json = "[{\"id\": \"0\", \"ip\": \"123\", \"mac\": \"456\"}, {\"id\": \"1\", \"ip\": \"111\", \"mac\": \"222\"}]";

        for (SlaveEntity entity : jsonToSlaveEntity(json)) {
            System.out.println(entity);
        }
    }

    public static List<SlaveEntity> jsonToSlaveEntity(String json) {
        ObjectMapper objectMapper = new ObjectMapper();

        try {
           return objectMapper.readValue(
                   json,
                objectMapper.getTypeFactory().constructCollectionType(List.class, SlaveEntity.class)
            );

        } catch (IOException e) {
            e.printStackTrace();
        }
        return new ArrayList<SlaveEntity>();
    }
}

BaseEntity

public class BaseEntity {
    private long id;

    public long getId() {
        return id;
    }

    public void setId(long id) {
        this.id = id;
    }
}

SlaveEntity

import java.util.List;

import javax.persistence.CascadeType;
import javax.persistence.FetchType;
import javax.persistence.OneToMany;

import com.fasterxml.jackson.annotation.JsonProperty;

public class SlaveEntity extends BaseEntity {
    private String ip;

    @JsonProperty("mac")
    private String macAddress;

    private String status;

    @OneToMany(mappedBy = "slave", targetEntity = PositionEntity.class, fetch = FetchType.EAGER, cascade = CascadeType.ALL)
    private List<PositionEntity> positions;

    public String getIp() {
        return ip;
    }

    public void setIp(String ip) {
        this.ip = ip;
    }

    public String getMacAddress() {
        return macAddress;
    }

    public void setMacAddress(String macAddress) {
        this.macAddress = macAddress;
    }

    public String getStatus() {
        return status;
    }

    public void setStatus(String status) {
        this.status = status;
    }

    public List<PositionEntity> getPositions() {
        return positions;
    }

    public void setPositions(List<PositionEntity> positions) {
        this.positions = positions;
    }

    @Override
    public String toString() {
        return String.format(
                "SlaveEntity [id=%d, ip=%s, mac=%s, status=%s, positions=%s]",
                getId(), ip, macAddress, status, positions);
    }
}

PositionEntity

public class PositionEntity {
    // ?
}

Result

SlaveEntity [id=0, ip=123, mac=456, status=null, positions=null]
SlaveEntity [id=1, ip=111, mac=222, status=null, positions=null]

You can use the below methods to read from a file and convert the JSON array to a List of Questions.

public String readJsonFromFile(String filePath) throws IOException, ParseException {
    String json = Files.readString(Paths.get("file path"));
    return new JSONParser().parse(json).toString();
}


public List<Question> convert(String JsonString) throws JsonMappingException, JsonProcessingException {
        ObjectMapper om = new ObjectMapper();
        CollectionType typeReference =
                TypeFactory.defaultInstance().constructCollectionType(List.class, Question.class);
        List<Question> questions =  om.readValue(JsonString, typeReference);
        return questions;
    }

If your JSON keys and Java class fields are different, use @JsonPropery annotation to map keys to fields

import com.fasterxml.jackson.annotation.JsonProperty;

public class Question {
    

    @JsonProperty("question")
    private String title;
    @JsonProperty("answer 1")
    private String a1;
    @JsonProperty("answer 2")
    private String a2;
    @JsonProperty("answer 3")
    private String a3;
    @JsonProperty("correct answer")
    private String cA;

    //setters & getters
}

Required Jars:
jackson-annotations.jar
jackson-core.jar
jackson-databind.jar
json-simple.jar //used to parse Json file to String

With Jackson you would do something like:

String jsonStr = "...";
ObjectReader reader = new ObjectMapper().reader();
List<Map<String, Object>> objs = reader.readValue(jsonStr);

Map<String, Object> myFirstObj = objs.get(0);
myFirstObj.get("data");
myFirstObj.get("what");
// and so on

Or even better you can create a pojo and do:

String jsonStr = "...";
ObjectMapper mapper = new ObjectMapper();
List<MyPojo> myObjs = mapper.readValue(jsonStr, new TypeReference<List<MyPojo>>() {});
MyPojo myPojo = myObjs.get(0);
myPojo.getData();
myPojo.getWhat();
// and so on

Use Jackson or GSON to read the JSON as List or array of expected type. With Jackson:

ObjectMapper mapper = new ObjectMapper(); // reuse if multiple calls MyPOJO[] pojos = mapper.readValue(jsonSource, MyPojo[].class); // with `List`, need to use `TypeReference` // or, if you do not have matching MyPOJO type: List<Object> pojosAsMaps = mapper.readValue(jsonSource, List.class);

There are many other ways you could do it, like reading as JSON tree (JsonNode). It all depends on whether you can easily model structure as Java class (if so, most convenient) or not.