ABSTRACT
This chapter explores the often meandering journey of identifying questions and problems for study within the frame of narrative inquiry. Sometimes narrative inquiries emerge from a set of stories that do not initially seem to have a strong connection. During the four-year period from which the narratives come, Stephanie Sisk-Hilton's formal research agenda was examining children's cognitive development in relation to a science curriculum that foregrounded the practices of science. In the midst of analyzing data for other purposes, she continued to return to the puzzle of how to balance students' interests and voices with the need to follow a well-defined conceptual agenda. And it is the ideas that tell people they must take them on that ultimately become sustainable topics for classroom-based inquiry. One of the things that become apparent when conducting research of any type in a classroom is that staying focused on a predetermined research question can pose an extraordinary challenge.
