Drawing on literature sets in education, leadership, philosophy and sociology, this study explores personal transformation within leadership preparation. Given that education in the United States has remained fundamentally unchanged for nearly 100 years, and there is call for change in public education leadership, this study follows a radical path to leadership development. Given that would be leaders must consider the nature of the self or being, the purpose of this ontology is to come to understand and document the phenomenon of one person's transformation—in particular, parts of the transformation related to notions of power and identity—that resulted from an educational leadership development and preparation program. The research questions guiding the study are: (1) How does one experience power within an epistemological and conceptual break in, and resultant ongoing transformation of, the self or being? (2) How does one experience identity within an epistemological and conceptual break in, and resultant ongoing transformation of, the self or being? (3) How can a personal transformational journey be mapped, chronicled, or charted to make it explicit? (4) What are the milestones and indicators of progress in the journey of transformational change from the perspective of the traveler? (5) What aspects of an educational leadership development and preparation experience have the potential to support transformational conceptual breaks of the self or being?

Phenomenological methods include journaling, professional documents, and purposeful reading. These methods are intended to capture the lived experience of change over time as well as the tools and roadblocks along the way. The ethnographic methods—including ongoing mentoring, surveys, interviews and interpersonal anecdotes—explore the social and interconnected aspects of such a change. These methods are intended to be neither definitive nor generalizable, but rather to capture the essence of the experience, articulate lessons learned, and construct an individual model of transformation.