This article begins by examining current crises facing historically marginalized youth, which necessitate more critical approaches to youth development and empirical investigations into the challenges that young people face. This requires not only listening to their voices, but actively engaging them in investigations of and interventions into social problems that affect their lives. Researching with youth raises particular dilemmas, however. The authors discuss strategies, within three guiding principles, that they found effective in conducting participatory action research with marginalized youth for the purposes of social and educational transformation.

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Urban high school reform is one of the most significant challenges facing education today. In response to this challenge, reformers have put significant energy toward restructuring the large high school primarily through creating smaller school settings. Although the research literature often draws connections between school size and student outcomes, an examination of life within these settings remains a large void. From the voices and experiences of students, this article examines how relationships are connected to school culture. The nature of student-adult relationships is disentangled by exploring how students experience personalized, respectful, and encouraging interactions with school adults. Then relationships are connected to student dispositions in schools by examining the question, relationships for the purpose of what? The author concludes that the silver bullet for high school reform is a commitment to forging deliberate "cultures of success" for low-income Black and Latina or Latino students in U.S. high schools. Implications for research, policy, and practice are explored.

In today's reform context, much attention is placed on policies and outcomes and far less emphasis on understanding the social and cultural processes in schools. Using case-study methodology, I examine relationships between lowincome, urban high school students of color, and the school adults with whom they interact. Using grounded theory, students' experiences are analyzed and interpreted through the lens of recognition. Recognition is used as both a theoretical and empirical concept to illuminate students' experiences and voices, especially since the construct is largely absent in the U.S. education discourse. Students revealed that being known by adults, talking with adults, engaging with adults personally, and experiencing encouraging adults were all critical elements of recognition. I suggest that student-adult relationships, via the practice of recognition in urban schools, needs to be interrogated, deliberate, and political so that the transformative purpose of education can be realized.

Hip hop culture is typically excluded from conventional educational spaces within the U.S. Drawing on the experiences of an educator who works with urban high school students and university level pre-and in-service educators, this article examines the role of hip hop culture for student engagement in two settings-an alternative high school setting and the university classroom. The article explores how dialogue, as a core element of hip hop culture, is used in disrupting traditional vehicles of engagement, particularly between youth connected to hip hop culture and educators who are traditionally disconnected from the culture. Drawing upon dialogical pedagogy and analyzing an actual dialogue between urban youth and preservice teachers, the author examines the ways in which the student-researchers were "dissed" (disrespected) during and after the dialogue. Implications for practice and policy are explored.