The case of children who are hard to reach is a matter of concern for educationalists in Europe and the wider world. Research and knowledge exchange activity that tries to capture the essence of interventions that successfully reduce barriers to learning is valued by those who work alongside vulnerable children and young people. This paper focused on the pressing cultural challenges that are faced by young people on their journeys towards engagement in formal educational settings. The research question is designed to ensure buy-in from professionals and voluntary workers in the field: what supplementary measures best support the most challenged young people in their transitions towards successful and responsible formal learning? Narrative data from three social enterprises are drawn together to support analysis of supplementary educational measures that have been established to support young people’s transitions into successful and responsible formal learning. The young people come from disparate contexts. They are the children of street dwelling Roma families in urban Romania, of newly arrived migrant families in England and of subsistence farming families in Zimbabwe. They are supported by education workers within new spaces created by a residential care home (Oaza), a supplementary school (Amana) and a community library (Zambuko/ Bridge). In this way the enquiry is multi-lateral since evidence is drawn from different but related sources. Narrative accounts are built up through an iterative process of discussions emerging from action research which includes the creation of reflective diaries about solution focused activities within the social enterprises. These accounts are brought together to identify particular and generic forms of provided for young learners to support their transitions into formal education.

The framework for the enquiry has been informed by principles derived from Freire supporting commitment to praxis, the process of action, reflection and reformulation. Modes of action research have been employed to promote participatory development and encourage innovation. The practitioners working in the social enterprises subsequently shared their developing practices in the form of ‘engaged narrative research’ as part of an EU Grundtvig funded Learning Partnership. The framework of ideas to support the analysis is drawn from literature about identity formation and dialogic development. The narrative data are discussed alongside Bauman’s work on culture as ‘continuity and discontinuity’ and Beck / Beck Gernsheim’s writing on ‘life as a work of art’. The engaged narrative research paradigm that is utilised is supported by Kristeva’s notions of intertextuality together with Bakhtin’s writings about incompleteness and heteroglossia. These conceptual frames support the process of making sense of data that come from this multi-lateral enquiry.

This fusion of engaged life experience and post modern commentary contributes to a review of Freire’s previous tenets about praxis, freedom and culture and provides opportunity to explore the options available for the ‘framing’ of educational opportunity as originally explored by Bernstein. The narrative accounts from the enquiry begin to indicate that innovative relational arrangements within newly created social enterprises (a supplementary school, a residential care home, a community library) have the power to reframe educational opportunities for some challenged young learners.