Hi Patrick,
There is no coupling from a bound object to it's observable. Rather, Kendo itself maintains the link between these object. This means that the viewModel itself is not stored in the jQuery data store, as some of the other kendo widgets objects you mention are. The elements themselves contain references to their individual binding properties, but these are binding instructions for Kendo, as opposed to traceable pointers back to the View Model.
If you need to retrieve a reference to the View Model from a form, you can either store the observable in the jQuery data store yourself, or access the object via some other means.
All the best,
Brandon
the Telerik team
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