More saving images from the grips of Facebook — my walking stick series from 2010.

Collecting some recent drawings here.

Originally composed as a Pecha Kucha presentation, Spring 2012 for Curriculum Theory, Policy and Change at Arcadia University. Inspired by all mentioned … plus Dr. Peter Appelbaum, Christopher Loeffler and Maxfield Arnosky. Thanks all ya’ll!

Some 20x20 thinking about the metaphor of the “rhizome” in learning

“Rhizomic learning theory” caught my attention this past fall when Dave Cormier started a robust dialogue about these ideas during a MOOC I somewhat follow called #change11. I decided to “dig” into it (pun intended) as part of a course on Curriculum Theory, Policy and Change that I am taking this semester.

Dave Cormier is a blogger and educator in Prince Edward Island, Canada, and published an article in Innovate—Journal of Online Education called “Rhizomic Education: Community as Curriculum” (2008).

Rhizomic learning theory is based on the metaphor of rhizomes found in the writing of philosophers Deleuze and Guattari in A Thousand Plateaus:

“… A rhizome as subterranean stem is absolutely different from roots and radicles. Bulbs and tubers are rhizomes. Plants with roots or radicles may be rhizomorphic in other respects altogether: the question is whether plant life in its specificity is not entirely rhizomatic. …”

A core idea of Deleuze’s rhizomic philosophy suggests that there is no fixed knowledge only new knowledge that emerges from acts of creation.

Therefore in regards to curriculum, Dave writes,

“In the rhizomatic model of learning, curriculum is not driven by predefined inputs from experts; it is constructed and negotiated in real time by the contributions of those engaged in the learning process.”

Other educators have been thinking about this metaphor as a way to think about learning. Mary Ann Reilly, a blogger and educator working in New Jersey, considers rhizomic theory in the context of teacher professional learning.

“I suggest that implementation of [professional development] programs as a substitution for professional learning undermines teachers’ agency; obscures our capacity to recognize anomalous situations, and diminishes thinking and learning. As a counter model to development, I describe professional learning as rhizomatic, Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari’s (1987) metaphor for horizontal thinking that is nonhierarchical, and advocate for locally determined professional learning.”

In a blog post about her work at the InnovationLab in Colorado where rhizomic learning is a key theory of action in the design and implementation of curriculum, titled “Wanted (And Needed): ‘Radical’ Collaborations” Monika Hardy writes,

“One of our immediate goals is to affect the research/researchers/stakeholders enough to break down the walls of tradition and remove major roadblocks to these spaces of learning/permissions, particularly in the mind, such as standardized testing and set curriculum. And to do it in a way that is useful.”

I believe that I see and experience different aspects of rhizomic learning by participating with teachers and learners – particularly those taking an inquiry stance towards their work and learning – both online and within networks (see also a previous short study I did on teachers leading in online public spaces). Dave Cormier has suggested that the rhizomic metaphor is a useful way to think about the ways we can learn learning and connecting in online networked environments given his experience with #change11 and also EdTechtalk.

Here are a few forums online that strike me as fairly dynamic centers of activity with potential for highly rhizomic connections:

• Teachers Teaching Teachers and, a related, …
• … teacher and youth created curriculum and social network space like Youth Voices (created and fostered by writing project teachers with others)
• I am biased, but … NWP Digital Is
• Forums supporting peer teaching and learning such as Peer 2 Peer University
• Cooperatively organized online spaces like the Cooperative Catalyst blog
• MOOCs such as #change11
• Twitter, in general, and in communities like #engchat
• And … various social media tools for creating, collecting, curating, annotating, sharing.

Would love to learn more about your rhizomic connections too!

See also …

• Dave Cormier’s recently created Rhizomic Learning group on Mendeley group can join.
• A Rhizomes about Rhizomes Pinterest board I am compiling you can follow or add comments.
• And a Rhizomatic diigo group I invite you to join too.

When I first started tinkering with the idea of rhizomes, I tweeted:

And it is true … there is something about rhizomes that I find very satisfying and comforting and familiar. And over the last couple of months I have been collecting rhizomes about rhizomes following the path of my thinking and feelings. It’s been fun to do. And now I’m at a point where I need to pull it together and create some pathways through all of this for others too.

My inquiry is this: What is rhizomic learning and what does it offer us in the context of curriculum theory, learning and change.

Through this inquiry, I’ve ended up with various pieces:

• definitions of rhizomic learning and examples by a variety of educators
• questions about the usefulness of a rhizomic metaphor for education
• experiments in rhizomic research and sharing with fellow students in curriculum theory
• connections to knowledge and learning theorists including historic people such as Dewey and current theorists like John Seely Brown’s work around tacit knowledge and the role of making and play in knowledge creation
• excitement about connecting these ideas to Kauffman’s notions of “adjacent possibilities” in biology (to the extent I can)
• wonderings about how this thinking connects to the role of making/tinkering and hacking in innovation
• wonderings about how this relates to research around flow and creativity
• an emerging interest in thinking about the role of intuition and feeling in learning
• thoughts about how the rhizome is useful in thinking about curriculum theory … and where there are challenges
• paper iris rhizomes that I keep making out of manila folders because it is fun to do

How does all of this come together?

working on these iris rhizomes

I do think Pinterest is pretty!

 … it just makes my brain feel right. Want to join me?

So finally … I published the study I did last semester about the ways that five colleagues of mine are teacher leaders in public online spaces. But this isn’t the first time I shared it. The first time I shared my findings and reflections on this work was with my fellow classmates when we were asked by our professor (the class was called Ethnography for Educational Practitioners class with Dr. Foram Bhukhanwala) to create a “performance” of the research. Which was pretty exciting. And then, also kind of challenging.

Here’s what I came up with … a bit more of an activity than a performance, maybe, but we performed in a participatory manner that I thought reflected the way I saw the teachers working online too.

First, I introduced my question — “In what ways do teachers lead in online public spaces” along with the framework of teacher leadership I was using and the context of my work. You are read more about that here.

Next, evoking my love for puppetry, I introduced all five teachers via their own words and along with their avatars. You can see a summary of their introductions on the Meet the Teachers page along with an image of their avatars and the manila folder versions I made too.

Then, I asked my classmates to write silently to themselves “what does teacher leadership mean to you?”

After writing for a few moments, I then asked them to read what these teachers said about teachers leadership when I asked this same question during our interviews. (Which you can now find within the findings of my study.)

Next I shared a description of the five core principles of teacher leadership (which you can also read more about in my study):

• Advocating what’s right for students 
• Opening the classroom door and going public with teaching; 
• Working alongside teachers and leading collaboratively; 
• Taking a stand; and 
• Learning and reflecting on practice as a teacher and leader.

And then gave each a pile of tweets, quotes, images and writing that I gathered from these five teachers over the course of this month long study and I asked them if they found evidence of leadership among the work, what else they noticed and what were the implications of what they noticed too.

Although we kind of ran out of time, we ended with the start of a conversation and some brief reflections about what it means to be a teacher leader and how teachers are leading on as well as off-line. … And it was fun! Always interesting to hear what others noticed too.

Much appreciation for my classmates who played along with me, my professor who asked us to share our work in this new and interesting way, and my colleagues for sharing and leading in all the ways that they do everyday.

Christina