Education Commons^™

Ontological Inquiry In An Undergraduate Communication Course, William B. Strean

Turning Toward Being: The Journal of Ontological Inquiry in Education

This essay explores how ontological and somatic approaches were applied in an undergraduate communication course. Beginning by contrasting the assumptions of traditional knowledge and skills-based approaches with the shift to a focus on being within ontological methods, the author expands to show specifically how somatics informed the learning activities and students’ development in communication. After providing examples of the core content of public speaking and interpersonal communication and shares students’ learning and feedback, the author concludes by considering broader possibilities for ontological inquiry and transformative education.

Distinguishing Inauthenticities: The Role Of Personal Storytelling In Engaging With Equality, Diversity And Inclusion In Education, Susie Miles

Turning Toward Being: The Journal of Ontological Inquiry in Education

This article challenges the traditional methodology of facilitating conceptual discussions about equality and diversity issues in training workshops, which has resulted in slow progress towards promoting more inclusive cultures in universities. The author puts forward the approach of ontological inquiry which enables individuals to look at and access their own tacit, unconscious, and inherited ways of being and acting. This approach, it is argued, has the potential to strengthen the way in which issues of power and injustice are addressed in universities. The author adopts storytelling as a pedagogical device to expose and invite inquiry about privilege, injustice and the …

Differentiating Modernity (The System Of White Supremacy) And Generating Otherwise Worlds As Publicly Engaged Scholars: What’S Ontological Inquiry Got To Do With It?, Carolyne J. White, Arturo E. Osorio, Tim K. Eatman, Margaret J. Weiss

Turning Toward Being: The Journal of Ontological Inquiry in Education

Seeking an answer to Tina Turner’s refrain, “What’s Love Got to Do with It?” this article is a rebellious, messy, place-based and deeply collaborative conversation. We draw upon the legacy of theatre and social critique and adopt the literary present tense to evoke a brave intimate space for imagining possibilities beyond the academic conventions of the present epistemological order. We seek to illuminate how ontological inquiry may provoke powerful access to generating new worldmaking for climate justice, particularly when one is being a publicly engaged scholar. Why new worldmaking? Within this unprecedented time of racial reckoning, war, climate catastrophe and …

Editorial Statement: Volume 1, Issue 2, Margarida Garcia, Carolyne J. White, Drew Kopp

Turning Toward Being: The Journal of Ontological Inquiry in Education

No abstract provided.

Phenomenological Ontology: Turning To Practice, Kaustuv Roy

Turning Toward Being: The Journal of Ontological Inquiry in Education

Ontology is often reduced to epistemology, that is, to yet another conceptual category for discussion. We do this because historically we are comfortable with the mental and are habituated to reducing everything to mental representation. But ontology is not rational discussion of ‘what is’; it is, rather, the cultivation of contact with ‘what is.’ And that means practice. We shy away from practice as though it is some native witchcraft, and prefer instead to think about it. The present paper proposes that instead of merely thinking about ontology, we practice toward its realization. I call this phenomenological ontology. Ontological practice …

The Faculty Journey As Ontological Inquiry, Miriam Carey

Turning Toward Being: The Journal of Ontological Inquiry in Education

In this essay, Miriam Carey (recently retired Full Professor of Political Science and Policy Studies at Mount Royal University in Calgary, Canada) suggests a new form of faculty development based in ontological inquiry. Challenging the dominant educational paradigm, rooted firmly in epistemological approaches, she encourages us to explore what might become possible in educational development when ontological approaches are embraced. Finally, Dr. Carey suggests some of the many benefits to both faculty and students which become available when ontology is the focus of education.

Learning That Matters Is Messy: Experiments Revealing Hidden Potential In Higher Education, Ryan Derby-Talbot

Turning Toward Being: The Journal of Ontological Inquiry in Education

Why are some learning experiences so profound that they alter our worlds, whereas others don’t end up sticking at all? The author investigates this question in the context of undergraduate education, recounting several educational experiments that highlight subtle but powerful aspects of the student learning experience. By exploring a different approach to teaching a math course, an alternative framework for academic specialization instead of traditional majors, and a radical approach to designing new institutions, an encounter with the hidden, ontological dimension of learning becomes possible. Accessing the ontological experience of the learner opens up new possibilities for meaningful, deep, and …

Ontological Constructivism In Higher Education: To Have, To Know, To Be, Richard Dubé

Turning Toward Being: The Journal of Ontological Inquiry in Education

The first objective of this article is to acknowledge the significant contribution of constructivism in its ability to critically challenge what realism often takes for granted as certain or as the truth. The second is to explore how it could go much further, beyond thinking and into being. Having concerned itself mostly with epistemology and the transformation of our ways of thinking, constructivism has come to neglect ontology and the possible transformation of our ways of being. Such an ontological turn is considered important for the reform of higher education.

Re-Envisioning Decolonizing Pedagogies: Beyond Knowing, Delving Into Being As An Access To Possible Decolonial Futures, Fatemeh Moghaddam

Turning Toward Being: The Journal of Ontological Inquiry in Education

This article argues that ontological phenomenological methods, addressing being, becoming, and existence, provide novel forms of knowledge production and pathways to decolonizing pedagogy in higher education through critiquing its neoliberalist and anthropocentric settler-colonial foundations. Two metaphors are employed to explore ontological pedagogy: one metaphor highlights the linguistic dynamics of joke-telling and the other compares the acquisition of a new language to ontological learning. A concise overview of decolonizing pedagogy and ontological phenomenological pedagogy is provided through sharing the author's experiences, positionality, and exposures to these frameworks. The inquiry also explores whether ontological pedagogical framework remains mainly discursive or leads to …

Ontological Inquiry: The Absent Heart Of The University, Drew Kopp

Turning Toward Being: The Journal of Ontological Inquiry in Education

After defining and outlining the three movements of ontological inquiry, the author makes the case that ontological inquiry is rhetorical education at its best, concluding that making such inquiry central to the mission of the university may contribute to responding effectively to the complex of crises that academia and the world currently faces.

Editorial Statement: Volume 1, Issue 1, Carolyne J. White, Margarida Garcia, Drew Kopp

Turning Toward Being: The Journal of Ontological Inquiry in Education

No abstract provided.

An Introduction To Pediatric Ophthalmology, Ian J. Mcclain, Md

Cooper Rowan Medical Journal

Pediatric ophthalmology can feel like a completely different world compared to its adult counterpart. Children can sometimes be extremely challenging to examine and pediatric ophthalmologists examine a wide variety of age groups, including the non-verbal infant, the animated toddler, the adolescent, and the nonverbal adult. Careful exams are important at each stage of development because visual development is most critical in the first decade of life. Each patient group requires a distinctive expertise to perform an effective eye exam.

This review gives a brief introduction to some topics central to pediatric ophthalmology, including common clinical tests, common pathology, and some …

Factors Influencing Graduate Program Choice Among Undergraduate Women, Bryna J. Harrington, Halei C. Benefield, Brooke C. Matson, Rebecca E. Hamlin, Jennifer E. L. Diaz, Grace E. Mosley, Rushina Cholera, Audrey R. Verde

Cooper Rowan Medical Journal

Context: Despite equal enrollment proportions in MD and PhD programs, there are fewer women than men in MD-PhD programs and academic medicine. Factors important in degree program selection, including the perception of gender disparities, among undergraduate students were characterized.

Methods: In 2017, pre-health students at four public North Carolina universities were invited to participate in an online survey regarding career plans, decision factors, and perceptions of gender disparities in MD, PhD and MD-PhD pathways. The authors characterized factors important to program selection, and evaluated the association of intended graduate program with perceived gender disparities using Fisher’s exact tests.

Results: …