In academic environments ruled by managerialist philosophies, learning as doing, as outcomes, prevails. This work complicates the equation by taking up learning as becoming. Through the prism of learning metaphors, which apart from construction and transmission have not been fully explored in our discipline, especially the potential of Bildung, we seek to make a case that naming an ontological turn helps us orient our priorities, even if the turn is already with us in translation and interpreting in such attributes and practices as affect, voice, creativity, identity, subjectivity, and self-reflection.