Drawing on data from a three-year Participatory Action Research project, undertaken with 41 teenage girls within and beyond the boundaries of a designated disadvantaged urban school, this article is an effort to critique the use of participatory methods as a means of producing different knowledge, and producing knowledge differently with students. In pursuit of this aim, we work to introduce participatory methods and the theoretical grounding of these methods; share our participants' perspectives on their engagement with two participatory methods, namely photovoice and timelines; and we also critique the value of these methods. We conclude this article with a discussion of the benefits and the challenges associated with the use of the participatory methods and present some implications for physical education research and practice. (Contains 7 figures.)