title: "Knowing the ledge": participatory action research as legal studies for urban high school youth.
abstract: Zero-tolerance discipline policies, harsh sentencing laws, and the gentrification of communities of color have devastating effects for the lives of young people. Coupled with the fact that urban schools can devalue their views, values, and understandings of the world, this article examines an effort to challenge deficit theories that permeate discussions on urban youth. Through the setting of a street law class at a high school with a social justice focus, two facilitators (an African American male and a Latina of Puerto Rican descent, one a qualitative sociologist and the other a lawyer, both trained as qualitative researchers) and a group of high school freshmen analyze the processes of the judicial system to analyze their lives through the tenets of participatory action research.
authors.affiliation: College of Education and the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, University of Illinois at Chicago, IL, USA.
authors.forename: David
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Stovall
authors.forename: Natalia
authors.initials: N
authors.lastname: Delgado
mesh_terms: D000293:Adolescent; D002641:Chicago; D055812:Community-Based Participatory Research; D003416:Criminal Law; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D017058:Mexican Americans; D012574:Schools; D012935:Social Justice / Q000193:education*; D013334:Students; D014505:Urban Population