Elements of a fusionist ontology: Paradigmatic choices in understanding the reasons for career change

This chapter explores “becoming” as a paradigmatic methodological construction for career change secondary school teachers. A fusionist ontology is developed to reflect this linking of “being” while also “becoming”. For the career change participants in this study, not dissimilar to a novice researcher, becoming secondary school teachers could be explained in terms related to whatever they had previously been; that is, their previous career engagements, experiences, and prior states. The fusion between what may have been and what may become is dynamic. Much like the career change participants, novice researchers too manoeuvre through the maze of methodology in their journey to define and understand their past and present social realities.