Baker, the 2016 recipient of the Illinois Distinguished Qualitative Dissertation Award through the International Congress of Qualitative Inquiry, utilized material from her research to author this chapter. Her research invites educators to consider ontological inquiry as a pedagogical approach to engaging students in the critical inquiry and self-reflection for the purpose of developing their capacity for lifelong learning, agency and leadership.

She writes: “What ontological inquiry calls for is the ongoing commitment to the discovery of who we are being. It calls for us to consider a paradigm where we do not have all the answers but rather we are constantly engaging with the questions in order to remain present with how we are showing up in the world, how the world occurs for us, and ultimately discovering what our contribution to the world will be.”

In her research, Baker offers an autoethnographic narrative that chronicles her own personal journey in ontological inquiry. Baker also utilizes participatory action research and individual interviews to engage other educators in critical self-refection and dialogue about their own experiences with leading and being lead in an ontological leadership course. 

One educator shares: “The primary frustration is the willingness to be in the gap, in the breakdown, and reconcile the cognitive dissonance. In an ontological inquiry the question is where is the gap going to show up, and am I willing to be in that gap to deal with it? The challenge is in becoming comfortable with questioning the premise of something. We have to be willing to inquire into the premise of our beliefs to reveal our faulty assumptions; otherwise we put them in action and they become the truth. The truth becomes something to protect and we hold on. To engage in ontological learning, we have to have a beginner’s mind.”

Baker argues that educators must be willing to engage in the same inquiry that we are inviting students to participate in. Doing so requires a level of authenticity, vulnerability and humility on the part of the educator. Baker calls upon instructors to rethink the power structures created in the classrooms and demonstrate a willingness to allow themselves to be the student and for the student to become the educator at any point in the classroom. Doing so creates a spirit of investment and collaboration that calls for everyone to be accountable for the learning and success of each other.

Educators are called to consider new pedagogical practices that invite students to experience themselves as part of the future they want to create. Baker asserts this will require from both educators and students a commitment to a better future for themselves, others, and society. It will collectively require educators and students to critically think about who they are being in the world, how they show up in the world, and what their contribution to it will be.

Baker’s book chapter is part of a collection of chapters that focus on democratic leadership and practices that seek to promote a more fair and just society. 

The chapter reports on research and the experiences and understanding of undergraduate students (preservice teachers) as they engaged in service-learning associated with their first teacher education course. Grounded in developmental theories, the chapter points out how preservice teachers made sense of their service experiences in ways that the instructor did not anticipate, and in spite of well-designed reflective practices and course assignments.  

The research examined how preservice teachers made meaning of their service-learning experiences, how service-learning combined with other course activities, prior experiences, and personal background to influence preservice teachers’ understandings about race and social justice, and how service-learning may have had both positive and negative effects on the development of knowledge, skills, and attitudes about race and social justice for preservice teachers from racially and socio-economically privileged groups.

Dooley and Burant present four case studies that illustrate how students: (a) primarily turned to prior experiences, values, and personal attributes and characteristics rather than course content as their foundations for sense-making; (b) consistently relied on a host of other people in their lives to actively reflect on their experiences; and (c) centered their attention and summarized the meaning of their experience via unexpected and often dramatic incidents that occurred, interestingly, outside of their actual sites and apart from the duties they performed in service. It is important to note that many of these factors are outside the control of the course instructor, raising critical questions for how service-learning is utilized and implemented as a pedagogy to assist students with particular learning goals, especially related to attitudes toward complex issues of race and social justice.

Through their eyes and with their voices, the students’ service-learning stories provide an ecological view of their experiences and contribute to the understanding of service-learning as it is experienced and understood by a student participant, sometimes in ways that are not anticipated by the instructor and that may run counter to the desired learning objectives.  

The students’ experiences indicate researchers still have much to learn about implementing service-learning that consistently leads to personal transformation and deeper commitment to social justice.

Although Dooley and Burant said they remain enthusiastic about the potential of service-learning, as this study illustrates, they caution that getting under the surface of students’ experiences requires consistent attention and effort and may also result in occasional uncomfortable intimacy, as well as doubt and uncertainty about what is actually being learned.