Research

Phenomenological observations of teachers encountering AI tools — often for the first time — examining prompting patterns, reactions, and the lived experience of meeting a technology that raises questions about what teaching is. The question is always: what does the encounter with AI reveal about what it means to teach?

Sean Legnini's dissertation study. Multi-site phenomenological observations of learners across settings that solicit different forms of embodied attunement — farm, museum, classroom, nature walk. Investigating whether placed, embodied learning constitutes ontological transformation rather than knowledge acquisition.

How do teachers use their own firsthand experiences as a teaching resource? Through interviews and classroom observations, building a picture of the ontological impact that teachers have on students by sharing their own stories.

Studying how deep rootedness in place brings about ontological development. Recent work includes studying how undergraduates experience the African American History Museum on their first visit, collecting artifacts and interviews from trips to Washington, DC.

A conceptual framework building on Heidegger's concept of dwelling, thinking about education as something deeply rooted in ecological and spatial realities. Education re-embedded in place, attentive to the rhythms of time, open to the emergence of meaning, built on trust and finitude.

A qualitative research technique under development that collects phenomenological data and uses visual maps as a way of coding. By coding data in the form of a map, temporal, spatial, and ontological inferences emerge about how a phenomenon was experienced.