This week we explore the work of Brian Lewis – with the help of Lee Schaefer and Sean Lessard – to co-construct an after-school programme with Indigenous Youth and their community in Canada. This is not an exploration of an intervention to help young people considered ‘deficit’ or ‘in need’ but an ethical co-construction of understanding and experience (both past and future) undertaken with others.

In presenting an example of Narrative Inquiry, Brian and Lee (with recognition of Sean’s role) sow how they/he (Brian) puzzled over his inquiry and committed himself to understanding experience – both his and the Indigenous Youth involved and their community – throughout the process. The narrative inquirer, as Brian and Lee write, remains attentive to past experience because it is “continuously interacting with the research process; this includes the researcher’s past experiences as well as those the researcher is conducting the narrative inquiry with.” Put differently, Brian’s past experiences as a teacher and curriculum consultant shape his identity as a narrative inquirer because while the physical structure of a gymnasium might remain unchanged for 20 years the way it looks, feels and sounds doesn’t remain constant.