University researchers face a significant obstacle when studying schools: their lives as researchers began in schools. How can researchers enter the contemporary high school and see the movement of bodies through those halls as something other than a confirmation or rejection of their own schooling experiences? What special intellectual and…

Conditions that foster and hinder participatory research are examined, using examples from one such research project aimed at dropout reduction undertaken with students in a "last chance" high school. The 13 student researchers sometimes used racial, gender, and social class differences to gain power and display undemocratic behavior within the…