ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses the processes and challenges of negotiating entry in narrative inquiries with children and youth. Negotiating entry into a research relationship with children and youth takes place over time and with careful attention to the storied experiences of each child, youth, families, and us, as narrative inquirers. As Jean shared stories of her early landscapes, Vera was drawn into recollecting her experiences of negotiating entry to Ravine Elementary School as part of a SSHRC-funded project called School Landscapes in Transition: Negotiating Diverse Narratives of Experience. In the narrative inquiry with youth who were early school leavers, youth participants came to the research from outside the institutional landscape of school. Narrative inquiry always begins in the midst of ongoing experiences. Inquiries conclude in the midst of living and telling, reliving and retelling, the stories of the experience that make up narrative inquirers and participant's lives, bit individual and social.
