Rhizome Metaphor: Legacy of Deleuze and Guattari in Education and Learning 9811990557, 9789811990557

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Myint Swe Khine   Editor

Rhizome Metaphor Legacy of Deleuze and Guattari in Education and Learning

Rhizome Metaphor

Myint Swe Khine Editor

Rhizome Metaphor Legacy of Deleuze and Guattari in Education and Learning

Editor Myint Swe Khine Curtin University Perth, WA, Australia

ISBN 978-981-19-9055-7 ISBN 978-981-19-9056-4 (eBook) https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-19-9056-4 © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2023 This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publisher, the authors, and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, expressed or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. This Springer imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. The registered company address is: 152 Beach Road, #21-01/04 Gateway East, Singapore 189721, Singapore

Contents

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Rhizome Theory and Twenty-First Century Learning . . . . . . . . . . . . Myint Swe Khine

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Non-human Agency in International Students’ Learning Realities: A Choreography of Actor-Network Theory and Rhizomes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Alfredo Salomão Filho and Tanja Tillmanns

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Everyone is an Expert: Rhizomatic Learning in Professional Learning Contexts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Helen Caldwell, John Cuthell, Steven Hall, Hanefa Osman, Christina Preston, and Sarah Younie

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In collaboration with Mike Blamires, Marilyn Leask, Nadya French, Gavin Hawkins, Laurence Boulter, Jon Audain, and Chris Shelton 4

Applying Deleuzian and Guattarian Principle of Asignifying Rupture in Students’ Online Rhizomatic Engagement Patterns . . . . Chaka Chaka and Tlatso Nkhobo

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Curriculum as Becoming: Becoming with a Forest . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Bo Sun Kim

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Becoming Learners in Laboratories of Learning: A Rhizomatic Assemblage of Nomadic Pedagogies . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Noemi Sadowska and Mark Ingham

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Rhizomatic Learning for Nomadic Learners: A Postdigital Education Blended Conceptual Metaphor Framework . . . . . . . . . . . . 111 Samia Kara

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Rhizomatic Learning in the Postmodern Era . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 127 Tatiana Bokova

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Rhizomatic Learning Environments: Possibilities for Education . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 143 Jeong Cir Deborah Zaduski, Klaus Schlünzen Junior, Daniela Melaré Vieira Barros, and Elisa Tomoe Moriya Schlünzen

10 Exploring Rhizomatic Learning on Twitter Through Research on Teacher Professional Development . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 157 Martina Emke and Agnes Kukulska-Hulme 11 The Students’ Use of Mobile Instant Messaging Applications: Deleuze and Guattari’s Nomadism Analysis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 173 Frank Makoza 12 Exploring Rhizomatic Thinking in Clinical Reasoning . . . . . . . . . . . . 193 Saroj Jayasinghe Index . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 201

Editor and Contributors

About the Editor Prof. Myint Swe Khine holds Master’s degrees in education from the University of Southern California, Los Angeles, USA, and the University of Surrey, Guildford. UK., and Doctor of Education from Curtin University, Australia. He was the Professor and Chair of the Assessment and Evaluation Centre at the Emirates College of Advanced Education in the United Arab Emirates. He currently teaches at Curtin University, Australia. He is the Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Science of Learning and Innovations. Dr. Khine has edited several books and published in international refereed academic journals. A recent volume, Handbook of Research on Teacher Education: Innovations and Practices in Asia, was published by Springer in 2022.

Contributors Daniela Melaré Vieira Barros holds Ph.D. in Education from UNESP—Brazil and in Education from UNED—Madrid. Assistant Professor, permanently in the Department of Education and Distance Learning (DEED) of the Open University (UAb), Vice-coordinator of the Bachelor Program in Education, Pedagogical Council member, and Development Unit of the UAb Local Learning Centers (UMCLA), a researcher at the Center for Interdisciplinary Studies of the 20th Century (CEIS20), the Laboratory of Distance Education and eLearning (LE@D) and the Center for Global Studies—Education and Global Citizenship Group (UAb). Tatiana Bokova Doctor of Science (Education), is a Professor at the Russian Academy of Education and Moscow City University. Her scientific interests are in postmodernism, rhizomatic learning, and alternative schools. Dr. Helen Caldwell is an Associate Professor at the University of Northampton, where she is a specialist in educational technology, teacher education, and online

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learning. She is an Apple Distinguished Educator and a National Executive Committee Officer for the subject association Technology and Pedagogy in Education Association (TPEA). She co-leads the new Centre for Active Digital Education at the University. Chaka Chaka is a Full Professor in the Department of English Studies, College of Human Sciences, at the University of South Africa (UNISA). His research interests include the following: language studies, literacy studies, computer-mediated communication (CMC), electronic learning (e-learning), computer-assisted language learning (CALL), mobile learning (m-learning), and mobile-assisted language learning (MALL). Dr. John Cuthell has been researching and evaluating the impact of new communications technologies on teaching, learning, and working throughout his career. He ran Virtual Learning, a consultancy specializing in research, evaluation, and change management aspects of e-learning. Part of his work involved research into the training and development needs of industry and education. In addition, John was the Research and Implementation Director for the MirandaNet Academy, developing practice-based research accreditation for teachers. International MirandaNet action research projects evaluated the global impact of interactive whiteboards on teaching and learning and the role of CPD in professional development. Dr. Martina Emke coordinates the academic staff development programme for Netzwerk hdw nrw, an association of twenty universities of applied sciences in Northrhine-Westphalia, Germany. Previously, she worked as a language teacher in further education, higher education and in a vocational school. For the European Centre for Modern Languages (ECML) Martina has worked as a teacher educator, project co-coordinator and materials developer. She is the co-editor of the new Castledown book series Developing Online Language Pedagogies. In 2019, Martina completed her doctorate in education at the Open University, which focused on freelance language teachers’ Twitter-based professional development. Her research interests include posthuman digital education, networked learning and the use of social media in language teaching and learning. Dr. Alfredo Salomão Filho is an educational & research consultant at AT Academic Feedback. He currently conducts Ireland’s Department of Education-funded research on creative writing in partnership with the NGO Fighting Words and the Institute of Education, Dublin City University. Alfredo holds a Ph.D. in education from Dublin City University. He has also engaged in EU-funded postdoctoral research, co-designing a blended learning course on smart home technology for older adults in Europe. His research interests and publications encompass science and technology studies (STS) and post-qualitative research methodologies, particularly in the sociology of education/work and sustainability. Alfredo is also a Research Fellow at the Earth System Governance Project,Utrecht University. Steven Hall is a Senior Lecturer in Education at Staffordshire University and a Senior Fellow of the Higher Education Academy, having previously taught in schools

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across the 4-18 spectrum with 18 years of experience as a headteacher. He is a Trustee of Education Futures Collaboration, helping to create MESHGuides which provide research-based evidence to inform teachers’ professional practice in 196 countries around the world. A practitioner at heart, he is an innovator and advocate of personalizing learning and learner empowerment, promoting a ‘Doing Education Differently’ philosophy through his writing and his broadcasting with VoicEd Radio. Dr. Mark Ingham is a Reader in Critical and Nomadic Pedagogies, a National Teaching Fellow (2021), Senior Fellow of the Higher Education Academy, and UAL Senior Teaching Scholar in the Design School at London College of Communication, University of the Arts London. He co-founded UAL’s Experimental Pedagogies Research Group (EPRG). His pedagogical and creative research over the last 30 years has been entangled encounters with images of thought and memory, rhizomatic and meta-cognitive learning theories, fuzzy narratives, and virtual and physical liminal teaching spaces. His research critiques relationships between autobiographical memory and photography, Deleuzian and Guattarian ideas of ‘becoming rhizomatic,’ assembling agency, nomadic thinking, active blended learning, with ideas of belonging and critical pedagogies. Saroj Jayasinghe is an Emeritus Professor of Medicine at the University of Colombo and was a long-standing Consultant Physician at the National Hospital of Sri Lanka. As a practicing clinician, he has explored themes of clinical medicine using a systems science approach. He was a member of the Science Committee Health and Wellbeing in a Changing Urban Environment: Using a Systems Analysis Approach’ of the International Science Council. His current research interests include the application of systems science approaches to clinical diagnosis, dengue, Covid-19, and chronic kidney disease of unknown aetiology. Klaus Schlünzen Junior holds a Doctor in Electrical Engineering from the State University of Campinas (Unicamp), a full professor in Informatics and Education from the São Paulo State University (Unesp), with a Post-Doctorate at the Barcelona Universitat. Professor at the Department of Statistics and the Graduate Program in Education. National Coordinator of the Master’s Program in Inclusive Education, Coordinator of the Promotion Center for Digital, Educational and Social Inclusion (known as CPIDES), and researcher in Research Productivity at CNPq. Dr. Samia Kara earned her Ph.D. in Applied Linguistics from the University of Mentouri-Constantine, Algeria. She presently teaches at the English and Scientific Method Department, German University in Cairo, Egypt. Her research interests include digital learning, conceptual metaphors, artificial intelligence, dialogic teaching, sustainable development and learning, intercultural competence saviors, and culturo-metrics of learner’s identity. Dr. Bo Sun Kim is a faculty member in the School of Early Childhood Education and Studies at Capilano University in Canada and a pedagogist of the Early Childhood Pedagogy Network. Her professional interests focus on teachers’ pedagogical dispositions, children’s relations with worlds through their narratives and artistic

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languages, and critical place-based research. Her work engages with postmodern theories, poststructural theorists Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guttari, and material feminist theories. Agnes Kukulska-Hulme is a Professor of Learning Technology and Communication at the Institute of Educational Technology, The Open University, the U.K., where she leads the Future Learning Research and Innovation Programme and the Innovating Pedagogy series of reports. Her work encompasses online education, mobile learning, teacher development, and inclusive learning designs and practices. She supervises doctoral students and mentors early career researchers. In addition to over 200 academic publications, she has authored policy and practice reports for UNESCO, the British Council, Commonwealth of Learning, International Research Foundation for English Language Education, and Cambridge University Press. Frank Makoza is a Lecturer in the Department of Entrepreneurship and Business Management at Cape Peninsula University of Technology, South Africa. He holds a Ph.D. in Information Systems from the University of Cape Town, obtained in 2017. His research interests are in the societal impact of digital technologies in the context of developing countries. His research output has been presented at International conferences and published in peer-reviewed International Academic Journals. He participates in peer-review of articles for the Conference on Information Communication Technology and Society, Electronic Journal of Information Systems in developing countries, and The Journal for Transdisciplinary Research in Southern Africa. Tlatso Nkhobo is a lecturer in the Department of English Studies, College of Human Sciences, at the University of South Africa (UNISA). His research interests include academic writing, student writing, language studies, rhizomatic learning, and technology-enhanced learning. Hanefa Osman M.A. studied Education Studies at the undergraduate level at De Montfort University, Leicester. She then went on to complete Education Practice at the Master’s level. Whilst working as a teaching assistant at a school during the COVID-19 pandemic, Hanefa realized the importance of technology in education and hoped to use her knowledge of digital technologies to make a difference. Dr. Christina Preston Associate Professor of Education Innovation at De Montfort University, has been at the forefront of education and technology for over 30 years. She founded the MirandaNet Fellowship in 1992, a professional organization that has become a global thought leader with over 1,200 members in 80 countries. Knowledge sharing and creation and managing the change process to ensure the impact is at the core of MirandaNet’s philosophy. Dr. Noemi Sadowska is a Programme Director in the Design School at London College of Communications, London, UK. As an education designer, she has extensive experience in curriculum design and degree launch. She is one of the co-designers of hybrid learning environments that invite students to reflect on how they learn, entitled Laboratories of Learning. Her current research investigates how to facilitate

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design students’ eco-socially just decision-making, leading them to become responsible design practitioners and agents of change. Her work has been published as part of 01.AKAD, Sweden; the Encyclopedia of Gender and Information Technology, USA; Visual Tools for Developing Cross-Disciplinary Collaboration, Innovation and Entrepreneurship Capacity, Australia; The Design Journal, U.K.; and most recently as part of Socially Engaged Design proceedings, Cyprus. Elisa Tomoe Moriya Schlünzen holds Ph.D. in Education from the Pontifical Catholic University of São Paulo and is a full Professor in Teacher Training for a Digital and Inclusive School from São Paulo State University (Unesp), Professor of the Graduate Program in Education at the University of Western São Paulo (Unoeste) and São Paulo State University (Unesp) and researcher in The Brazilian Council for Scientific and Technological Development (CNPq-PQ). Dr. Tanja Tillmanns is a lecturer at South Westphalia University of Applied Sciences and an educational and research consultant at AT Academic Feedback. She holds a Ph.D. in sustainability education in higher education from Dublin City University and publishes sustainability education, adult education, and poststructural education. She currently conducts EU-funded postdoctoral research on the intersection of lifelong learning with IoT skills at the Institute of Education, Dublin City University. Tanja was also elected to the Ethics Committee of South Westphalia University of Applied Sciences. Dr. Sarah Younie Professor of Education Innovation at De Montfort University, is also the MirandaNet Fellowship Research and Innovation Director. Sarah has been involved in international research on educational technologies and teaching for twenty-five years, including using digital technologies in educational settings for UNESCO, the E.U., U.K. Government Agencies, Local Authorities, educational charities, and other funders. She has worked as a teacher and researcher in secondary schools and universities, and as the journal editor for the Technology, Pedagogy, and Education Association, she has gathered evidence for the Parliamentary Select Committee Inquiry into Education. Most recently, she has been heading the GERMs programme (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QC8WYa20biw). Jeong Cir Deborah Zaduski holds Ph.D. in Education from the São Paulo State University (Unesp), with a Ph.D. internship at Portugal Open University (Uab). CAPES Scholarship by the PDSE—Sandwich Doctoral Program Abroad. Masters in education from UNESP and Master’s in Intercultural Communication and Mediation from Università degli Studi di Verona. Specialist in Teaching and Learning Assessment. Bachelor’s degree in Social Communication. Bachelor’s degree in English and Portuguese (grammar and literature).

Chapter 1

Rhizome Theory and Twenty-First Century Learning Myint Swe Khine

Introduction The prediction by futurists and visionaries that learning in the 21st Century will be radically different is not an overstatement. Learning can occur anywhere and anytime in the universally interconnected world. Knowledge transfer is no longer a fixed process but somewhat divergent and nonlinear. Deleuze and Guattari introduced the concept of the rhizome, and the notion of rhizomatic learning allows educators to explore the educative process with the rhizomatic lens. Rhizomatic learning posits that learning is a continuous, dynamic process, making connections, using multiple paths without beginnings, and ending in a nomadic style. Along with the rhizome metaphor, Deleuze and Guattari also offered principles that are relevant to education and learning. These include connection, heterogeneity, multiplicity, asignifying rupture, cartography, and decalcomania. Cronje et al. (2016) analysed the learning needs of the twenty-first century and noted the transformation in the way we learn. Among other changes are shifting learning from the individual to collective, and behaviorism to constructivism, and connectivism. He synthesizes the principles of Deleuze and Guattari relevant to education and learning, referring to the work of Mackness et al. (2016). Table 1.1 shows the principles of the rhizome and its relevance to education and learning. One of Deleuze and Guattari’s principles, connection, is relevant and significant to teaching and learning as we are increasingly connected physically, emotionally, and educationally in today’s seamlessly interconnected world. There are other collective works of Deleuze’s philosophical projects. Among them are the concepts of becoming, lines of flight, deterritorialization, and reterritorialization, and these concepts and perspectives are used to interpret and understand the research findings in other academic disciplines (Masny, 2013). M. S. Khine (B) Curtin University, Bentley, Perth, Australia e-mail: [email protected]; [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2023 M. S. Khine (ed.), Rhizome Metaphor, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-19-9056-4_1

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Table 1.1 Principles of the rhizome and relevance to education and learning Principle

Explanation (Deleuze & Guattari, 1987)

Connection

“A rhizome ceaselessly establishes Encourage ceaseless connection and connections between semiotic diversity in people, ideas, and chains...” (p. 6) resources. The system has no “There is no ideal speaker-listener, beginning or end and can be entered at any point there is [no] homogeneous

Heterogeneity

Relevance to teaching and learning (Mackness et al., 2016)

linguistic community” (p. 6) Multiplicity

There is no unity to serve as a pivot in the object or to divide in the subject” (p. 7)

Design is a-centered and antihierarchical It allows for breakaway groups or A-signifying rupture “A rhizome may be broken [] but it individual learners to A-signifying will start up again on one of its old reorganize in locations of their choice lines, or on new lines” (p. 8) Cartography

“...[a] map that is always [] modifiable and has multiple entryways and exits and its own lines of flight” (p. 22)

Decalcomania

“The tracing has [] translated the map into an image; it has already transformed the rhizome into roots and radicles” (p. 13)

Learners create and follow self-selected, individual pathways and embrace uncertainty without attempt to predict learning outcomes

From Cronje et al. (2016) Reproduced with permission

The chapters in this book consolidate and document recent theory-building, explorations, conducting systematic, prodigious, and multidisciplinary research that are linked to Deleuze and Guatarri’s theory, philosophy and concepts, and identifying future research and development. The studies covered in this book allude that the rhizome concept can not only be applied to technology-based instruction; it can also be used in other forms of teaching and learning.

Legacy of Deleuze and Guattari In Chap. 2, Filho and Tillmanns explore international students’ informal learning experiences through the lenses of Deleuze and Guatarri’s rhizome philosophy and Actor-Network Theory (ANT). Their chapter describes how learning is non-linearly negotiated by a series of actors, coming into being as an effect of a non-essentialist set of relations. The chapter also discusses relational, more-than-human ontologies drawing on the post-qualitative constructs offered by ANT and the rhizome. Caldwell and her colleagues share the rhizomatic learning in the professional learning context from the MirandaNet Fellowship in Chap. 3. MirandaNet Fellowship was founded in 1992 as an international community of professional educators which

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has endevoured a unique approach to continuing professional development (CPD), education, innovation, and research. The MirandaNet Fellowship has developed active, practice-based research focused CPD framework in partnership with practitioners, researchers, and educational product developers. The chapter describes the development of an online community of practice model of Rhizomatic Learning, MESHGuides, and MirandaMod as a new way for collaborative learning. Chaka and Nkhobo, in Chap. 4, investigate a Deleuzian and Guattarian principle of asignifying rupture in undergraduate students’ online engagement patterns on Moodle’s online discussion forums. The authors noted that online learning environments are haphazard and nonlinear when viewed from a Deleuzian and Guattarian rhizomatic learning standpoint. Their study explores converging and diverging coherence (asignifying ruptures) based on online discussion topics. These converging and diverging coherence themes were then analysed using thematic analysis and visualized. The chapter reports the findings from their study. The authors suggested that student engagement patterns be studied across all modules to discover instances of converging and diverging coherence/asignifying ruptures. These findings can inform the design of online learning activities, curricula, and teaching and learning practices in educational settings. Chapter 5 presents the trajectory of children’s rhizomatic learning processes through a curriculum inquiry around a forest. Deleuze and Guattari’s concept of the rhizome explores the curriculum as becoming with worlds (social and material worlds) through multiple connections, spontaneity, relations, and encounters. In this chapter, the author reports a study in a childcare center about the forest inquiry in which children walk through the forest and make connections with the forest. Using the concept of the rhizome, becoming, and assemblage, the author explains the children’s learning experiences to understand the world around them. During the recent pandemic, educators have used innovative ways to reach out to students through different technological means, including online learning spaces. In Chap. 6, Sadowska and Ingham from the London College of Communications offer a methodology to test how the emergence of hybrid and eventful spaces affords the process of becoming learners and forming communities of learning practice within broader institutional systems and structures. The approach was drawn on nomadic learning as a process of collaboration, dialogue, and construction, where both staff and students can ask the fundamental question of how they learn. The authors developed three tests. Test 1 covers understanding rhizomatic learning and rethinking what it means to learn with nomadic lenses, considering what theories and practices can serve as a guide. Test 2 explores the Laboratories of Learning becoming rhizomatic and nomadic. Finally, Test 3 deals with interrogating ’Course Designer’ for evidence of how courses can become Laboratories of Learning. The authors concluded that allowing students to understand how they are learning is the first step in benefiting from rhizomatic learning. The second step is nurturing processes that enable communities of learning. The third step is the need to underpin steps one and two with nomadic pedagogies to enable emergence, adaptability, and dynamic engagement with the learning process.

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From the German University in Cairo, Samia Kara shared a post-digital education blended conceptual metaphor framework focusing on rhizomatic learning for nomadic learners in Chap. 7. The framework combines the notion of learning (as a rhizome) and learners (as nomads). The chapter attempted to answer some of the pertinent and fundamental questions, including what is rhizomatic learning, what is nomadic communities of learners, and what are the recommendations for future research on rhizomatic learning metaphor. In Chap. 8, Bokova examines and provides a methodological interpretation of rhizomatic learning, noting that rhizomatic structure is provisional and limitless and abolishes the traditional idea about education as a centralized structure. The author introduced the characteristics of the education process as decentralization, multiplicity, discreteness, connectivity and heterogeneity, cartography, subjectivity, and anti-binarism—many of these are linked to Deleuze and Guattari’s philosophy. International Relations is a study of the international political, social, cultural, and economic system, including historical development and understanding of the actors, institutions, and processes of the system. In Chap. 9, Zaduski and colleagues explore the rhizomatic learning environments as possibilities for education. The authors note that the traditional education system follows the standard procedures and practices established in the past. The chapter explains the development of an educational training program that consisted of rhizomatic features, such as the avoidance of hierarchical structures, the variety and multiplicity of participants, the rupture of paradigms, and the encouragement of establishing and maintaining connections. The authors develop seven activities and strategies called regulatory axes to create the learning space. The authors discuss the role of technology and findings from the study. Emke and KukulskaHulme from the Open University in the UK (Chap. 10) suggest that rhizomatic learning is a concept that has great potential for educational research and innovating pedagogy. The authors reviewed rhizomatic learning and the notion of rhizome in internet-related and MOOCs research and provided an account of language teacher professional development research. They elaborate on the investigation into language teachers’ Twitter-based professional development, methodological challenges, and opportunities to apply the idea in the study. Makoza, in Chap. 11, describes Deleuze and Guattari’s nomadism analysis of the study on the students’ use of mobile instant messaging applications in a university context. The study involved first-year students who progressed from secondary school to tertiary institutions. Employing the concept of nomadism which involves rhizomatic space, deterritorialization, nomadic subjects, and nomadic resistance, the study explains how the mobile instant messaging platform WhatsApp supported students in new ways of living, thinking, and accessing spaces where they shared their experiences, generated new knowledge, and ways of learning. The results from the qualitative analysis found that first-year students used WhatsApp in imaginative and creative ways beyond formal face-to-face and classroom-based learning practices. It was also found that WhatsApp helped their becoming in a new education setting by creating spaces where their knowledge and experience were shared with

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peers in creating new knowledge. The study proved how Deleuze and Guattari’s theory could be used in educational research. Jayasinghe (Chap. 12) shares how rhizomatic thinking can assist clinical reasoning in the medical diagnosis and treatment process. He noted that system thinking and clinical reasoning at the bedside require networked thinking, concept maps, and tools such as Clinical Reasoning Map (CRM). These diagrammatic methods explicitly depict the links across multiple nodes, such as diseases, disorders, clinical features, and pathogenetic mechanisms. He urged that systems thinking could be extended to rhizomatic thinking, where a rhizome metaphor is applied to view complex clinical scenarios. The chapter presents the pedagogy of clinical reasoning and the implication of applying rhizomatic thinking to clinical reasoning. The author illustrates an example of rhizomatic thinking in clinical reasoning with multiple entrances and exits in clinical mapping.

Conclusion This book is a collective work of academics and researchers with a common interest and foresight in Deleuze and Guattari’s rhizome theory and related concepts. Each of the chapters in this book offers exemplary works, highlighting the paradigm shift, creative and unique approaches, innovative methods, frameworks, and theoretical and practical aspects of rhizome metaphor, and makes a significant contribution to the existing literature. It is hoped that this book will generate critical discourse and find ways to revitalize Deleuze and Guattari’s concept, philosophy, and theory to enrich the understanding of education and learning.

References Cronje, J., et al. (2016). Twenty-first-century learning, rhizome theory, and integrating opposing paradigms in the design of personal learning systems. In J. Spector (Ed.), Learning, design and technology (pp. 1–22). Springer. Deleuze, G., & Guattari, F. (1987). A thousand plateaus: Capitalism and schizophrenia. University of Minnesota Press. Mackness, J., Bell, F., & Funes, M. (2016). The rhizome: A problematic metaphor for teaching and learning in a MOOC. Australasian Journal of Educational Technology, 32(1), 78–91. Masny, D. (2013). Cartographies of becoming in education. Sense Publishers.

Chapter 2

Non-human Agency in International Students’ Learning Realities: A Choreography of Actor-Network Theory and Rhizomes Alfredo Salomão Filho and Tanja Tillmanns

Opening the File Deleuze and Guattari’s (1987) figuration of the rhizome stands in opposition to the more traditional, arborescent and tree-like linear thinking that dominates our understanding of teaching and learning (Munday, 2012). The arborescent or “tree” perspective on reality focuses on the forced configuration of hierarchies, segmentation and dichotomies, such as the divide between teachers and learners and the compartmentalization of all subjects in unrelated fields of knowledge. From a rhizomatic perspective, there is no pre-established hierarchy between teachers and learners: we are all learners. Learning itself, we argue, is not exclusively human, as reality is enacted through relational manifestations of human and non-human agency. It is also non-linear, implying that we can learn at any point in time and space; not only in the classroom—that which is often scholarly classified as “informal learning” (Hager & Halliday, 2006). The rhizome and its principles, which will be detailed in this chapter invite us to move away from more traditional ways of understanding learning by advocating multiperspectivity, mirroring the complexity and heterogeneity of the world we live in and where learning takes place. Emerging from science and technology studies (STS) and inspired by ethnomethodology, actor-network theory is another approach that embraces heterogeneity in agency and understands virtually any phenomenon as an effect of heterogeneous associations (Law, 1992). As the ontology of networks proposed by ANT does not permit itself to be captured into a consistent, immutable theory (Eriksson, 2005), it is expected that ANT scholars will produce and intervene in realities in a singular way—especially because ANT ontology, as much as the rhizome, is relational. The A. Salomão Filho (B) · T. Tillmanns Friedrich-Alexander University, Innovation in Learning Institute, Erlangen-Nuremberg, Germany e-mail: [email protected] T. Tillmanns e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2023 M. S. Khine (ed.), Rhizome Metaphor, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-19-9056-4_2

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influence of the rhizome on actor-network theory (ANT) is observed by Schmidgen (2015), who concluded that Deleuzian themes influenced Latour from early on. In exploring the ontological principles of a non-Cartesian perspective on reality, Latour himself uses the term “actant-rhizome ontology” (Latour, 1999a). In education, the rhizome and ANT have inspired authors from different fields to rethink learning, pedagogical practices, and education policy (Degenais et al., 2013; Rimpiläinen, 2015; Mulcahy, 2012; Fenwick, 2010; Fenwick & Landri, 2012; Holmes, 2014; Kuby, 2017; Salomão Filho & Kamp, 2019; Kamp, 2018). Similar to the work performed in this chapter and challenging dominant assumptions of learning, Gough (2004) conceptualizes the methodological disposition “rhizomANTic”. One particularity of his work is the connection of the rhizome with ANT and Haraway’s (1994, 1997) optical metaphor of diffraction. In this chapter, rather than coining another “ANTian” term, we follow Jensen’s (2020) observations on the potential of the rhizome to “infiltrate and complicate the network”. In this way, we aim to work “the metaphysical surface” with ANT and the rhizome together (Jensen, 2020, p. 83) as we explore international students’ learning experiences. We associate the concept of translation (Latour, 1999b), the principles of the rhizome—multiplicity, heterogeneity and connection, asignifying rupture, and cartography (Deleuze & Guattari, 1987) to create a form of “choreography” (Law & Singleton, 2013) that illuminates learning. Subsequently to the discussion on nonhuman agency and focusing on a set of practices performed by humans and nonhumans, ANT and the rhizome take the stage, revealing significant overlaps or generative “partial connections” (Law, 2008) between them. This scholarly discussion is guided by two objectives. First, to illuminate how learning is an effect of heterogeneously negotiated realities, and second, to illustrate how ANT and the rhizome can offer a radically different lens for learners and educators alike to re-envision learning, welcoming non-humans to the analytical framework.

Hybrid Entities Relational ontologies invite us to think abstract, so let’s consider the interaction between us, the authors of this paper. It is a matter of ontological perspective to see only a couple of humans relating with each other using language as a communication tool and utilizing objects as a support for human relations. We did interact but “humans are no longer by themselves” (Latour, 1994, p.41). Numerous objects mediated our very interaction, allowing and denying the enactment of a particular set of realities. Law and Singleton (2013) provide an illustration on how the relational world functions. That’s how I try to work in practice. It’s what I was trying to do on the fish farm. The oxygen acts—it calms the fish. The fish act—they lead the people to go looking for oxygen. And the people are acting too, of course. They stop what they are doing and go off looking for oxygen. It’s a kind of dance, a form of choreography. Everything is related to everything

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else. And gets itself assembled, one way or another (Law & Singleton, 2013, p. 491, authors’ highlight).

In ANT, theorizations of the agency of objects have been the pivot of many academic debates and assertive scholarly reactions (Bloor, 1999; Collins & Yearley, 1992). Deleuze and Guattari’s (1987) philosophical concept of the rhizome (a multiplicity or a heterogeneous assemblage) also describes the relations and connectivity of things whether human or non-human. The term non-human, although extending the idea that what is not human may also exert agency on other actors and alter the composition of actor-networks or assemblages is, itself, problematic. As the tenet proposed by ANT and rhizome theorists is to eliminate a priori dualism, such as human/non-human, micro/macro, and the subject/object polarity, we are invited to make a reservation to the reader. To refer to an object as “non-human” has many possible implications; here we expose two important ones. First, it still has the potential to bring another dualism or the idea of an ontological demarcation between human beings and the “mere” objects surrounding them: “the inanimate world” and “the conscious world”. In our analysis, we rather consider the existence of relations, only one ontological “flat” zone (Latour, 1993, 1994, 1999a, 1999b, 2005) where all sorts of associations are possible (Callon, 1986). Or in Deleuze & Guattari’s words, “all multiplicities are flat” (1987, p. 9). “A rhizome or multiplicity” (ibid) is an assemblage that is constantly becoming via productive connections with other rhizomes/multiplicities. Since a multiplicity consists of human and non-humans, everything is participating in it in an immanent flux. Any assemblage can have agency or “becomes active” through its connections with other humans or non-humans. Second, it might yet reflect the notion of human superiority. We shed light on how objects, whether cutlery, climate, constructions, fruits, and house utilities, not only participate in actor-networks/assemblages, but also help enact international students’ learning realities. Our concern is to focus on the hybridization of the actors’ “choreography”, as put by Law and Singleton (2013). We illustrate this thought, as follows. In the excerpt below, Law (1987) demonstrates how heterogeneous materials are combined and “last longer than the interactions that formed them” (Callon & Latour, 1981, p. 283). Therefore, this new combination would be afforded to produce an effect on the world. The galley builders associated wood and men, pitch and sailcloth, and they built an array that floated and that could be propelled and guided. The galley was able to associate wind and manpower to make its way to distant places. It became a “galley” that allowed the merchant or the master to depart from Venice, to arrive at Alexandria, to trade, to make a profit, and so to fill his palace with fine art (Law, 1987, p.116).

From an “unmodern” perspective (Latour, 1993, p.32), where one is not purifying beforehand each object described in the event above, we can note how an array of actors is being interlinked together in order to form a “punctualised” (Law, 1992), “mobilised” (Callon, 1986) or black boxed (Latour, 1999b) actor-network: that which is constituted by many parts but also works as one. Objects from nature, such as wood

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and wind interact with members of society, namely merchants and sailors, who in turn interact with discourses, namely trade practices. Then, that which is “real” (nature), “collective” (society) and “narrated” (discourse) is woven together, translating one another (Latour, 1993). The idea of translation is key for us. In Latour’s words, it is “the creation of a link that did not exist before and that to some degree modifies the original two” (Latour, 1999b, p. 179). In this sense, the only classification one could give to an actor-network would be related to its hybrid composition. In the example above, it is unfeasible to reduce mercantilist practices to be purely a matter of power and politics or exclusively a maritime phenomenon. Neither the galley nor the merchants are alone when they act: ANT and the rhizome support neither a materialistic standpoint nor technical determinism. Law (1987), Latour (1999b) and Callon (1986) are calling our attention to issues of hybridization and symmetry in translation practices, (re) distributing both action and the responsibility for action among different actors, the quasi-objects and quasi-subjects (Latour, 1993). Humans might have the desire (or need) to engage in trade practices with the help of a galley, and the galley itself has its own goal (or “function”) that is, to transport humans and other actors to the destination where trade is performed. The point is that humans and non-humans are not ontologically secure entities that simply relate to one another. Rather, actors change as per their relations with other actors. In every rhizome there is another rhizome; and they can then connect with other rhizomes to form new ones (Deleuze & Guattari, 1987). The galley, the merchant, the wind, the sea, the artefacts, and Alexandria are rhizomes (heterogeneous assemblages or multiplicities) which in Law’s (1987) example connect with one another to form yet another heterogeneous assemblage: the “trade rhizome”.

Action Over Essence Through the lenses of the “sociology of the social” (Latour, 2005) or the sociological anthropocentric tradition (Law, 2004), objects—when not completely forgotten— only assist us to achieve our rational minds’ goals and desires, which is seen as a direct effect of our interests. Although ANT defends the application of material semiotics in the description of the practices of all actors, allowing the entrance of non-humans to the analytical frame, we are not trying to defend the idea that human beings are the same as objects. The challenge here is to leave ontological singularity behind and embrace ontological multiplicity. Multiplicity is also a principle of the rhizome and is found throughout Deleuze’s work. Reality has no subject or object, “there are only multiplicities of multiplicities forming a single assemblage, operating in the same assemblage: packs in masses and masses in packs” (Deleuze & Guattari, 1987, 4). In both ANT and the rhizome, actors, from an individual to a doorbell, do things; they modify, and make other actors do things.

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Actors are what they do, not what they “inherently” are. ANT and the rhizome prioritize actions over essences, although an imagined essence might be the result of a series of actions. We illustrate this thought: if we are found cheating in a poker game, the other players will consider us “cheaters”, but it is the fact that we hid cards under our sleeves that makes us “cheaters”. In this mundane and hypothetical example (we do not even play poker), what makes us a cheater is a concatenation of actors and a series of translations. We are not being a “cheater” alone. Our long sleeve shirts, the cards, and the desire to win the game at any cost (which is also an effect of heterogeneous interactions/multiplicities and most likely highly complex to trace) are all translated/assembled, producing the way we act; therefore, composing the collective. We act as a result of translations enacted by different actors. Note that, although the focus is on the “cheater”, more actors display agency in this example and need to be taken into consideration if one wants to describe an actor-network/assemblage in action. As Latour puts it, “action is not a property of humans, but of an association of actants” (Latour, 1999b, p. 182). Similarly, for Deleuze and Guattari (1987), the “collective” represents a multiplicity, an assemblage, or a rhizome that constantly changes in nature and connects with other multiplicities, transforming into yet another multiplicity. In other words, we are relating ourselves with our shirts, the cards, and our desire to form a multiplicity, a cheater–assemblage. For Deleuze and Guattari, “human being is both immersed in a world of nonhuman forces and inseparable from affective relations with nonhuman, animals and other things” (Bowden, 2015, p. 78). As much as in Law’ (1987) example of the galley, where sailors and merchants learn how to perform their duties, this poker-assemblage is therefore the result of learning how to relate in the most “effective” way with the long sleeve shirt, the other players and the cards to enact a cheater-assemblage.

The Gift to Initiate Action Yet, traditional social theory would argue that human beings have the gift to initiate action, which would hinder the proposed symmetry. From an ANT standpoint, however, intentionality and reflexiveness are not precursory sine qua non attributes that allow interaction or participation in the collective world of actors, as Lee and Brown (1994) defend. ANT demonstrates that action does not need human capabilities in order to be performed, as these human features are nothing but an effect of an array of translations performed by various human and non-human actors (Law, 2008). This dialogues with the rhizomes’ principles of connection and heterogeneity, where any given spot of a rhizome can and must connect to anything other (Deleuze & Guattari, 1987). These principles suggest an ontological heterogeneity that connects things as diverse as “organization of power, and circumstances relative to the arts, sciences, and social struggles” (Deleuze & Guattari, 1987, p. 7). As such, rhizomes are heterogeneous assemblages, where their agency “becomes distributed across an ontologically heterogeneous field, rather than being a capacity localized in a human body or in a collective produced (only) by human efforts” (Bennett, 2010, p. 23).

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The attention to the source of action or the “prime mover” (Latour, 1994, p. 34) is of little importance when analysing material practices (Latour, 1987, 1999b). The rhizome too is a “decentered organisation: it is an entity, a being, a way of being with no allegiance to an a priori beginning or authorizing prime mover” (Boulter, 2015, p. 36). The task of describing a course of action in detail is only possible if one considers action as being distributed among heterogeneous actors.

Analytical Symmetry Once we free ourselves from the idea that agency is exclusively a human condition, objects—and the work they do—start becoming visible in learning. An actor, whether human or non-human, can make things happen (Law, 1992). In ANT and the rhizome, we type on the keyboard in the same ontological sense that the keyboard touches our fingers. Instead of thinking that action is carried only by humans from A to B, we should consider action not only as a heterogeneous and uncertainly distributed practice, but also as a circulating “movement” (Latour, 1999a, 2000, 2005), which in the rhizome relates to the continuous creation of generative connections (heterogenesis) with anything (Deleuze & Guattari, 1987; Guattari, 1995). Figure 2.1 below illustrates the “unmodern” way (Latour, 1993) in which circulating action functions. Critics such as Collins and Yearley (1992) argue that ANT (and the rhizome) research is immoral, apolitical when treating objects in the same analytical manner as individuals. These accusations can be contested if one considers ANT and the rhizome as an alternative and provocative way of doing educational research in contrast to the Euro-American metaphysical tradition (Guattari, 2000; Law, 2004) and the overfocus on formal learning: the “banking” model of pedagogy that composes the traditional education system, promoting the status quo as how things should be (Buchanan, 2014; Freire, 2008). Fig. 2.1 Modern/unmodern agency

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Intermediaries, Mediators and Learning By thinking relationally, we may consider objects, as much as humans, as participants of, and for learning, since it is also a network effect (Fenwick, 2010). This implies that any established connection can potentially foster learning. For example, Freinet, who is also known as the pedagogue of objects (Carlin, 2014), used connection and heterogeneity as an inspiration to motivate students to trace their material connection to the world through objects, humans and different places (Cole, 2014). By connecting different teaching strategies, he re-envisioned teaching and learning as a heterogeneous and collective imagination for engagement. When reflecting on Freinet’s work through rhizomatic lenses, we observe the effort in “mapping” rather than “tracing”. The former implies the generation of connections between unrelated fields, removing blockages to engage with uncertainty. In this sense, mapping is constantly performing modifications to a given rhizome and is open to multiple and heterogeneous manifestations (Deleuze & Guattari, 1987). If a breakdown occurs, it will be clearer that objects make us, humans, do unexpected things. Objects stop carrying causality (intermediaries) and start making their “voices” heard (mediators) (Callon, 1991; Latour, 1993, 1999b, 2005). If our computer stops working in the way it should, if it stops being black boxed (Latour, 1987), our behaviour (or course of action) will be altered. We will have to go to a specialized shop and have it fixed. Latour’s (1994) examples of the “sleeping policeman” (speed bump) and the projector in a lecture hall could also illustrate this argument. While the latter is being “invisible”, taken for granted, an intermediary, as it performs its function; it is black boxed. At the moment it breaks down, everybody in the lecture hall would turn their attention to it, watching the repairman disassemble it into pieces—not to mention that the lecture would have to be interrupted (Latour, 1994). When we reflect on learning, the rupture of a projector breaking down triggers a new connection of the “teacher-pupils-projector-assemblage” with the IT expert who will fix the projector. There is also learning for the teacher as to how to deal with unexpected disruptions and nevertheless motivate the learning of the pupils. The pupils can observe and learn from the teacher on how to deal with unexpected challenges professionally. Also, the teacher and the pupils may learn something as they observe the IT expert fixing a projector. In rhizomatic contexts, human intentional action is consistent with humans not only being “immersed” in a non-human world but also being inseparable from connections to non-humans (Bowden, 2015).

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When Non-humans Promote Learning in International Education Settings We now welcome objects to, or rethink agency and learning in the universe of international education with a special attention to translation (Latour, 1999b) and the rhizomatic principles of multiplicity, heterogeneity and connection, asignifying rupture, and cartography (Deleuze & Guattari, 1987). The empirical data emerged from two rounds of in-depth interviews with twelve students from all over Brazil living and studying in Dublin, Ireland; three from each of the following four categories: English learners (English for Speakers of Other Languages, ESOL), undergraduate and master’s students, and PhD candidates. We use colours as identifiers in order to ensure the anonymity of participants.

Culture, Climate and Learning Conversations of one of the authors with the Brazilian students in Dublin, although with an interview script to hand, were characterized by the enactment of a series of bifurcations: unexpected objects that became part of the dialogue. In this sense, the interview was a mediator (Latour, 1993, 2005). Pink, a master’s student, described her experience from a cultural perspective where her “Brazilian culture” was an actor, therefore influencing not only her practices in Dublin but also the way she depicted her world. We decided to follow a bifurcation generated by the interview and asked her: “What is culture?”. Culture is a set of values and dogmas that are constructed along education and the environment in which a person is inserted. Everything can play a role; the climate, architecture, and how the people react to that, which can change all the time (Pink).

Albeit considering that a person is “inserted” in an environment, which is a manifestation of dualism or the “Great Divide” itself (Latour, 1993), we could focus on three important aspects issued by Pink that relate to the relational ontology proposed by ANT and the rhizome. First, the fact that architecture and climate were brought to the scene as actors that define culture. Second, that reactions to those can change “all the time” (Pink). Third, that “everything can play a role” (ibid). If we use the rhizome as a lens for Pink’s understanding of culture, then values, dogmas, education, individuals, climate and architecture are rhizomes which together form the multiplicity or heterogeneous “culture-rhizome”: a result of multiple rhizomes connecting with one another. In describing their displacement from somewhere in Brazil to Dublin and their performance as international students in that city, the agency of the climate was cited in some students’ accounts. Nature moves from the background, unstudied, to become an actor in the stories of the students, modifying the relationship among actors. From a perspective of “nature-culture” (Latour, 1993), PhD candidate Green became more tolerant and less judgmental when she considered the role played by

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the Irish climate, where sunny days are rarer than in tropical areas. When she saw the Irish wearing summer clothes in any glimpse of sunshine during autumn, she then understood the reasons for such a behaviour. Undergraduate students Silver and Red narrated how the cold climate made them “lazier” and less propitious to leave their accommodation, with the latter attributing her “bad mood” as an effect of consecutive rainy days. Moreover, master’s student Beige described how facing the weather for the first time, when she arrived at Dublin airport, made her think that she would not be able to spend more than three months abroad. Becoming more tolerant, less judgemental, and more self-aware with respect to either being aware of one’s bad mood or one’s inability to withstand colder climates are examples of learning of international students.

Accommodation, House Utilities and Learning Physical structures also modified the way the students’ learning realities were enacted. Whether an apartment or a house, accommodation spaces are actornetworks/rhizomes that generate more durable effects, resisting deterioration and maintaining stability throughout time (Law & Mol, 1995), which allows them to temporarily translate/connect with a high number of humans and non-humans. It is in/with the student-accommodation-assemblage where many relevant cases of the agency of objects can be observed, participating in the enactment of learning of international students. A set of objects with visible agency in the students’ accounts refers to house utilities and cutlery. When it carries food from the plate to our mouths, a fork is an intermediary. It does what is expected from it, transporting causality. However, when cutlery and house utilities force humans to enact new modes of behaviour (learn), one starts seeing them as mediators, actors who bring uncertainty to other actors (human and non-human) and modify the current state of affairs of a given actor-network (Callon, 1991; Latour, 1993, 1999b, 2005). In the narrative accounts, the work deployed by mediators contributed to what some students called “learning” (Lavender, Beige, Green), where different actors engaged in the production of some form of knowledge. In this sense, knowledge is performed as a result of relating, with the participation of objects (Fenwick & Edwards, 2010, 2012). The first thing you learn as an ESOL student is to live with people whom you have just met. Everyone does something that annoys you and you cannot start arguing with everybody all the time. I live with four other students and one of them is very laid back; he never cleans anything. You have to learn that people have different mind-sets; you cannot simply start a fight for any behaviour you don’t accept (Lavender). If I don’t put the bin out, nobody else does. I avoid using the dishwasher when there is only one dirty plate there, because I like to be sustainable; but my housemates do differently. It is problematic and stops me from wanting to establish friendships with them, but at the same time you learn a lot from that (Beige).

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The quotes above illustrate what Latour (1987, p. 108) denominates as strategies for “translating interests”. While Latour considers the interplay between fact-builders (scientists) and the actors they enrol (data, materials, instruments), we place house utilities, the students, and their housemates into the translation scene. Students cannot control the behaviour of their housemates “in order to make their (housemates’) actions predictable” (ibid). Students and their housemates must then “participate in the construction of a fact” (ibid). In this case, the fact refers to cleaning cutlery after use and managing house utilities in a certain manner in order to contribute to the functioning of the “student-accommodation-actor-network/rhizome”, where harmony would potentially prevail if all actors perform their functions as intermediaries rather than mediators. The most serene form of translation, “I want what you want” (Latour, 1987, p. 108), is not feasible for neither Lavender’s nor Beige’s excerpts, as it is exactly the opposing interests that generates the friction. In their case, we observe the invention of a new goal as an effect of the reshuffling of interests (Latour, 1987). The displacement of goals is considered learning; the students previously tried (unsuccessfully) to convince their housemates to become aligned to their own interests and had to change their initial goals in order to keep the actornetwork functioning. In other words, the students learnt how to keep (or make) the actor-network punctualized (Law, 1992). From a rhizomatic perspective, the events above could constitute a “studentaccommodation-assemblage”, which for Lavender and Beige resulted in a moment of rupture. As Deleuze and Guattari (1987, p. 11) note: “always follow the rhizome by rupture; lengthen, prolong, and relay the line of flight; make it vary, until you have produced the most abstract and tortuous of lines of n dimensions and broken directions”. It is precisely this moment of rupture, resulting in a line of flight, that allows a rhizome to thrive. In other words, the moment when Beige and Lavender realize that everyone acts in a certain way, the “student-accommodation-assemblage” is ruptured, resulting in a line of flight where tolerance is enhanced. In Lavender’s and Beige’s assemblage, a new connection (tolerance with difference) has been enacted.

Fridge, Fruits and ANT The following event narrated by Green also includes a learning event which is afforded, mediated by humans and non-humans. She describes a situation she experienced in England, before moving to Ireland. I was living with undergraduate students when I was doing my masters in England. There were six girls in the apartment sharing the kitchen, the shower, and the toilet. I remember one time when there was a discussion because the German was complaining about the Indonesian, who was occupying way too much space in the fridge putting fruits there. And fruits are not to be put in the fridge, according to the German. Then, the German asked the French, who lived in northern France, if she puts fruits in the fridge, and the French said: “no, I don’t put fruits there, fruits stay out of the fridge”. Then I [a Brazilian] came into the kitchen and the Indonesian asked me: “where do you put your fruit?” And then I said: “in the fridge, I won’t eat warm fruits”. And then we sat and understood that people coming from hotter areas put

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fruits in the fridge, whereas people coming from colder countries don’t need to put fruits in the fridge. It’s a silly thing, but it’s a truth that, for me… “Where are you going to put fruits? In the fridge”. This was my reality but suddenly you see that’s not the reality for the other and then you’re shocked. Then I learnt to be more tolerant with the differences and accept them. This helped me a lot when I arrived here. I didn’t have any cultural shock because I was already waiting to see lots of different things which was actually what I saw (Green).

Latour (1999b) provides four different meanings of “technical mediation”, an argument through which we can understand the agency of objects as being more complex than technical determinism or simple causality. We focus on the “third meaning of mediation” or “reverse blackboxing” in order to make sense of how translation occurs among heterogeneous actors. In the excerpt above, there would be no detour if the actor-network “students-fruits-fridge” were black-boxed. Every actor of the referred network has an interest, or “what lies between actors and their goals” (Latour, 1987, p. 108). There would have been no tension if the German student would have found enough fridge space to store her food and, symmetrically, if the shared fridge would have had enough space to stock her food (step 1: disinterest). Further on, the unexpected discussion in the kitchen of the student accommodation was generated by the lack of fridge space (step 2: interest) or when the fridge shifts its role from being an intermediary to becoming a mediator. This event cannot be seen as a phenomenon of pure causality as the goal of the human actor is to store food in the fridge and the goal (or function) of the fridge is to be able to provide storage space. If the German student had found fridge space, that could have been considered a relation of pure causality, although the actor-network “students-fruitsfridge” would still be displaying the agency of objects (one buys food as one has fridge space to store them, or food is bought as it can be stored in the fridge). We observe then, in “step 3” (composition of a new goal), that a new goal has been established. The German wants to have storage space for her food and blames the Indonesian for blocking her to achieve her objective. The German’s new goal is to make the Indonesian clear space in the fridge. The former’s matter of fact (fruits are stored out of the fridge), is turned into a matter of concern1 (Latour, 2005) as the Indonesian enters the scene. The Indonesian’s matter of fact is that fruits are stored in the fridge, otherwise they will start decaying (one of the fruits’ functions is to be eaten, whether by humans, animals or fungi). The German enrolled the French, and the Indonesian enrolled the Brazilian to join the “fruit negotiation” with clear interests of recruiting allies, therefore becoming more influential (Latour, 1994), which in turn would contribute to the achievement of their goals—or the success of the implementation of their modus operandi. At this stage (step 4: OPP), the German enacts an obligatory passage point through which the fruits, the fridge, Green, the French and the Indonesian student need to pass through in order to participate in the actor-network being described. All students need to engage in the discussion “fruits-fridge” in order to have their interests satisfied—or at least to reach an agreement on where fruits will be stored. 1

A “matter of fact” is the fact that achieved ontological security, whereas a “matter of concern” is the fact that has its ontological security challenged (Latour, 2005).

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Table 2.1 Reverse blackboxing (adapted from Latour, 1999b, p. 184) Step 1

Disinterest

The fridge has enough space to store everyone’s food

Step 2

Interest

There is no storage space in the fridge

Step 3

Composition of a new goal

German student wants to store her food in the fridge, and the fridge has the same “interest” (function), which is being able to store food. The newly composed goal is: Indonesian student must clear space in the fridge

Step 4

OPP

Discussion/negotiation of different matters of fact (now a matter of concern)

Step 5

Alignment

Acceptance of different “truths” through shifts in the frames of reference

Step 6

Blackboxing

Fruits need not be stored in the fridge

Step 7

Punctualization

Actor-network “student-fruits-fridge” works as one. Students place fruits out of the fridge. Fridge space is not an issue anymore; it performs its function again

Step 5 (alignment) is enacted when the allies of each side share their “truth” or matters of fact (which is now a matter of concern). The arguments or the sharing of everyone’s “truth” are posed and, as the English climate is not tropical, all the actors have their goals converged to one: interests are translated. Agreement is achieved as both the German and the Indonesian were invited to take a detour to change their frames of reference and to imagine an alternative reality (fruits are left out of the fridge in colder climates and in the fridge in hotter ones). As a result, the actor-network is black boxed again (step 6: blackboxing), which makes the tension disappear. Finally, the fridge and the fruit perform their functions and the humans of the story are no longer engaged in controversy (step 7: punctualization). Table 2.1 below illustrates each step of the “reverse blackboxing”. A “common world” (Latour, 2004) is therefore achieved, where international students accept the enactment of other realities as a possibility. Turning the focus to Green who—as much as the Indonesian student—saw “putting fruits in the fridge” as her truth, makes the analysis of the event above possible through the lenses of translation. The effect of such translations is the enhanced “tolerance”, a new actor enrolled into Green’s actor-network in England that stopped her from experiencing (or helped her to overcome) a “cultural shock” when she moved to Ireland. Cross-cultural sensitivity and tolerance for the Other are well-rehearsed concepts in intercultural education literature, as “internationalisation should also induce tolerance and respect, in students” (Stier, 2006, p.3), encompassing theorizations of cosmopolitanism, global citizenship and multiculturalism (Brunner, 2006; Clifford & Montgomery, 2014; Kim, 2010; Mansilla & Gardner, 2007). From a material semiotic perspective, Green’s experience shed light on how such a “cross-cultural sensitivity” was locally composed, rather than simply acquired. Instead of seeing this student “acquiring” knowledge that she previously “lacked” (an essentialist interpretation), ANT allows us to see an entity making a connection or enrolling an actor through translation, albeit such a process is fragile and may fail

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(Law, 2008). Despite taking place away from formal education settings, such an event illuminates learning if “learning is not simply an individual or cognitive process, nor is it solely a social achievement”, but “becomes enacted as a network effect” (Fenwick & Edwards, 2013, p. 42). The point here is that both Green and “tolerance” have the same ontological status, or “pay the same semiotic price” (Latour, 1994, p. 6). Yet, we insist that it is misleading to see Green and tolerance as two distinct entities. It is the hybrid actor-network “Green-tolerance” that ANT makes an effort to elucidate; first, how they were formed and second, how they (even momentarily) remain assembled.

Fridge, Fruits and the Rhizome Green’s event is revisited in this section. We now relate her statement with the principles of the rhizome, as displayed in Table 2.2. Every rhizome contains lines of segmentarity according to which it is stratified, territorialized, organized, signified, attributed, etc., as well as lines of deterritorialization down which it constantly flees. There is a rupture in the rhizome whenever segmentary lines explode into a line of flight, but the line of flight is part of the rhizome. These lines always tie back to one another. That is why one can never posit a dualism or a dichotomy, even in the rudimentary form of the good and the bad (Deleuze & Guattari, 1987, p. 9).

Since there is a rhizome in every rhizome (or a multiplicity within every multiplicity), Green’s learning experience can be illuminated twofold: through an analytical focus on the “students-fruits-fridge-assemblage” and Green’s assemblage. Table 2.2 Relating rhizomatic principles with reverse blackboxing The rhizome

ANT

Empirical illustration

Students-fruits-fridge-assemblage (characterized by multiplicity, heterogeneity and connections)

Disinterest

The fridge has enough space to store everyone’s food

Rupture in students-fruits-fridge-assemblage

Interest

There is no storage space in the fridge

Line of flight

Composition of a new goal

German student wants to store her food in the fridge, and the fridge has the same “interest” (function), which is being able to store food. The newly composed goal is: Indonesian student must clear space in the fridge

Mapping (Cartography)

OPP

Discussion/negotiation of different matters of fact (now a matter of concern)

Deterritorialization

Alignment

Acceptance of different “truths” through shifts in the frames of reference

Blackboxing

Fruits need not be stored in the fridge

Another/modified assemblage (rhizome)

Punctualization

Assemblage “student-fridge-fruit” works as one. Students place fruits out of the fridge. Fridge space is not an issue anymore; it performs its function again

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Within the shared space, the “students-fruits-fridge-assemblage” is ruptured in the moment the German student does not have storage space for her food in the fridge. As she mobilizes the other students, whom she shares the fridge with, they engage in an exchange of perspectives, which in turn stimulates empathy for one another— representing the line of flight. The exchange of perspectives or the line of flight could have been either territorialized or deterritorialized. If it was territorialized, then these students would have remained more closed minded and would have kept insisting on their preferred fruit storage method. In other words, they would have engaged in tracing (decalcomania) where we reproduce something already established. However, in this case, deterritorialization or a destabilization of the assemblage took place. The students mapped (cartography) a new way of living together. By “removing their blockages”, they became open to experimentation and innovation (Deleuze & Guattari, 1987) and participated in the generation of a consensus about the future fruit storage methods in the shared accommodation. This means that the exchange of perspectives resulted in a modified assemblage, containing more multiplicity and heterogeneity. This is exemplified by a more respectful engagement with one another, the consensual agreement about how to store fruit in their shared home and the acquired knowledge about different fruit storage habits around the world. If we focus on Green’s assemblage, we can analytically explore learning even at a closer distance. Green is a multiplicity, a rhizome with many other connected rhizomes. One of these rhizomes is her brain. A rupture happened and a line of flight was fired when Green joined the discussion with her flatmates about the fruit storage preferences. As her brain released dopamine and ACh (neurotransmitter acetylcholine), priming it for plasticity and learning, she became motivated to share her own perspective and be attentive to the other perspectives. Dopamine is released in anticipation of a reward, while ACh is released when we are surprised or experience a novel situation (Owens & Tanner, 2017). This experience deterritorialized Green’s “brain-rhizome”. Through the activation of the synaptic plasticity—which describes the changes in the connections between existing neurons by the release of dopamine and ACh (Owens & Tanner, 2017)—her neuronal memory of fruit storage methods began to strengthen its connections among responsible neurons during the learning process (or that fruits are left out of the fridge in colder climates and in the fridge in hotter ones). Furthermore, her neuronal memory assemblage deterritorialized or mapped new connections, recruiting neurons that were previously not related to one another, such as the “neuron-assemblage” of empathy with the “neuron-assemblage” of fruit storage habits. Ishai et al. (2000) noted that during learning, the neuronal memory assemblage connects neurons that may be physically not near in the brain; they can become synaptically connected and the strength of their connections can be enhanced. If these neurons are coactivated repeatedly, the connection becomes part of the long-term memory (Caroni et al., 2014), which in turn will result in Green becoming more open minded and tolerant towards difference in the future.

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Closing the File This chapter discusses relational, more-than-human ontologies drawing on the postqualitative constructs offered by ANT and the rhizome. Through our lenses, we provide alternative views on learning as an effect of human and non-human inter-actions, demonstrating how theoretical inspirations can shape how we conduct a given analysis and write up research. Rather than performing either appropriate or “inappropriate reductions of the real” (Clegg & Slife, 2009, p. 23), this analysis aims at stimulating educators to creatively consider teaching and learning as a changing, hybrid assemblage or actor-network. While not advocating that humans are the same as objects, the debate on nonhuman agency finds momentum as it focuses on “whatever” makes another entity act, rather than only considering human intentionality. Humans and objects not only participate in the universe of international education, as much as in any other setting of social life, but also show to be essential to the very existence of it, translating into each other and producing effects, such as learning. In this, contemplating international students as “purely human” would be a matter of judgement/perspective and/or ontology. In this study, they are materially heterogeneous as they are intertwined with nature, society and discourse—at the same time. The contribution from non-human agency is twofold. First, it reinforces the argument for the absence of any a priori ontological “border” or hierarchy between entities, focusing on the hybridization of actor-networks and rhizomes. Second, it gives rise to the process of remaining puzzled about issues of agency when describing actor-networks and rhizomes in action, which opposes to the anthropocentric Euro-American tradition (Law, 2004) that concerns to identify the “prime mover” (Latour, 1994, 1999b) or the sources of action (Latour, 1987). ANT and the rhizome point out the heterogeneity and inseparability of collective life, where agency (more than simply causal agency) and learning are distributed into practices.

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Ishai, A., Ungerleider, L. G., Martin, A., & Haxby, J. V. (2000). The representation of objects in the human occipital and temporal cortex. Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, 12(2), 35–51. Jensen, C. (2020). Is actant-rhizome ontology a more appropriate term for ANT? In A. Blok, I. Kamp, A. (2018). Assembling the actors: Exploring the challenges of ‘system leadership’ in education through actor-network theory. Journal of Education Policy, 33(6), 778–792. Kim, T. (2010). Transnational academic mobility, knowledge, and identity capital. Discourse: Studies in the Cultural Politics of Education, 31(5), 577–591. Kuby, C. (2017). Why a paradigm shift of ‘more than human ontologies’ is needed: Putting to work poststructural and posthuman theories in writers’ studio. International Journal of Qualitative Studies in Education, 30(9), 877–896. Latour, B. (1987). Science in action. Harvard University Press. Latour, B. (1993). We have never been modern. Harvard University Press. Latour, B. (1994). On technical mediation—philosophy, sociology, genealogy. Common Knowledge, 3(2), 29–64. Latour, B. (1999a). On recalling ANT. In J. Law & J. Hassard (Eds.), Actor-network theory and after (pp. 15–25). Blackwell Publishers. Latour, B. (1999b). Pandora’s hope: Essays on the reality of science studies. Harvard University Press. Latour, B. (2000). When things strike back: A possible contribution of ‘science studies’ to the social sciences. British Journal of Sociology, 51(1), 107–124. Latour, B. (2004). Politics of nature: How to bring the sciences into democracy. Harvard University Press. Latour, B. (2005). Reassembling the social: An introduction to actor-network-theory. Oxford University Press. Law, J. (1987). Technology and heterogeneous engineering: The case of Portuguese expansion. In W. Bijker, T. Hughes, & T. Pinch (Eds.), The social construction of technological systems: New directions in the sociology and history of technology (pp. 111–134). MIT Press. Law, J. (1992). Notes on the theory of the actor-network: Ordering, strategy, and heterogeneity. Systems Practice, 5(4), 379–393. Law, J. (2004). After method: Mess in social science research. Routledge. Law, J. (2008). Actor network theory and material semiotics. In B. Turner (Ed.), The new Blackwell companion to social theory (pp. 141–158). Wiley-Blackwell. Law, J., & Mol, A. (1995). Notes on materialitiy and sociality. The Sociological Review, 43(2), 274–294. Law, J., & Singleton, V. (2013). ANT and politics: Working in and on the world. Qualitative Sociology, 36(4), 485–502. Lee, N., & Brown, S. (1994). Otherness and the actor-network. American Behaviour Scientist, 37(6), 772–791. Mansilla, V., & Gardner, H. (2007). From teaching globalization to nurturing global consciousness. In M. Suárez-Orozco (Ed.), Learning in the global era: International perspectives on globalization and education (pp. 47–66). University of California Press. Mulcahy, D. (2012). Affective assemblages: Body matters in the pedagogic practices of contemporary school classrooms. Pedagogy, Culture and Society, 20(1), 9–27. Munday, I. (2012). Roots and rhizomes: Some reflections on contemporary pedagogy. Journal of Philosophy of Education, 46(1), 42–59. Owens, M. T., & Tanner, K. D. (2017). Teaching as brain changing: Exploring connections between neuroscience and innovative teaching. CBE life sciences education, 16(2), fe2. Rimpiläinen, S. (2015). Multiple enactments of method, divergent hinterlands and production of multiple realities in educational research. International Journal of Qualitative Studies in Education, 28(2), 137–150 Salomão Filho, A., & Kamp, A. (2019). Performing mundane materiality: Actor-network theory, global student mobility and a (re)formation of social capital. Discourse: Studies in the Cultural Politics in Education, 40(1), 122–135.

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Schmidgen, H. (2015). Bruno Latour in pieces: An intellectual biography. Fordham University Press. Stier, J. (2006). Internationalisation, intercultural communication and intercultural competence. Journal of Intercultural Communication, Issue, 11, 1–12.

Chapter 3

Everyone is an Expert: Rhizomatic Learning in Professional Learning Contexts Helen Caldwell, John Cuthell, Steven Hall, Hanefa Osman, Christina Preston, and Sarah Younie In collaboration with Mike Blamires, Marilyn Leask, Nadya French, Gavin Hawkins, Laurence Boulter, Jon Audain, and Chris Shelton

The Context A key issue in introducing digital technologies into learning has always been the lack of adequately trained teachers. Although the 2020 global pandemic has created high levels of interest in online learning, we do not yet know how much the actual training for teachers in all phases has been increased. A key means of training teachers to work online in a way that limits training costs is to encourage teachers at schools, HE and VET levels to join a community of practice (Thompson et al., 2013) because teachers gain experience from each other in practical performance. This observation was made in a UK government agency evaluation of the first country-wide professional development programme in the world in Information and Communications Technology which was planned to make all teachers and assistant teachers across the curriculum proficient in digital technologies (Preston 2004). In fact, in 1992 Preston had already set up the MirandaNet Fellowship, the first online ‘community of practice’ (CoP), in which international H. Caldwell · J. Cuthell · S. Hall · H. Osman · C. Preston (B) · S. Younie MirandaNet Fellowship, Croydon, UK e-mail: [email protected] M. Blamires · M. Leask MESHGuides, Leicester, UK N. French · G. Hawkins · L. Boulter National Association for Education Technology, Nottingham, UK J. Audain · C. Shelton Technology, Pedagogy and Education Association, London, UK © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2023 M. S. Khine (ed.), Rhizome Metaphor, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-19-9056-4_3

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teachers, teacher educators, researchers, policy makers and developers could support each other in figuring out the best ways to use computers to enhance learning in all phases of education (Preston, 1995, 1999a, 1999b). An early example of a CoP is a medieval trade guild, but Wenger (1998; Wenger et al., 2002) used the term to describe the processes by which professionals work together to further their skills and knowledge collaboratively in education and in business. In the UK other professional development organizations in digital technologies in education, such as ITTE (now TPEA) and Naace were established in the 1980s and soon developed their own online COPs. MESHGuides, established in 2016, had a particular remit to make the growing volume of research in this area more accessible to busy teachers who wanted to incorporate digital technologies into their practice. The authors of this chapter have been drawn from all these organizations to offer their collaborative perspectives on Rhizomatic Learning. Some of the authors of this chapter are all longstanding members of the MirandaNet Fellowship, where the international members who join for free are all experts in teaching and learning through education technology. Others are members of TPEA, Naace and MESHGuides where there is further experience of the value of sharing knowledge and expertise. The development of the theory and practice of online learning by this professional CoP is the history we tackle in this chapter using rhizome metaphors.

The UK Government Policy Towards Professional Organizations Many of us undertook research up until 2010 under the remit of Becta, the government agency, often cited in our reference list. Its website was an importance resource for educators across the world who were struggling with the impact of digital technologies, but without the government support that was available in the UK. (https:// mirandanet.ac.uk/becta-reassembled/) In fact, much of the research we cite up until the present day has involved the participation of almost 2,000 professionals as action researchers who belong to these organizations. However, the UK research scene in this field changed dramatically in 2010. The change of government in 2010 led to the closure of Becta as part of a series of austerity measures. It removed the guidance and advice in education technology previously offered by Becta personnel. Becta’s research website was relocated to a government repository. These austerity measures removed funding for digital devices, for research, guidance, training and recommendations around the use of technology. There was also a move away from building strong relationships with organizations such as Naace, ITTE, MeshGuides and the MirandaNet fellowship, who had previously worked to provide support and guidance on the use of technology in schools and universities. Twelve years later, in 2022 there has still been no effective contact between civil servants and these expert professionals.

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With the closure of educational institutions following the Covid-19 pandemic the importance of equipping institutions and practitioners with knowledge and resources on applications of digital technology in education became apparent. The demands of online learning exposed the lack of a plan for the continuity of teaching and learning. Without readily available technology-related guidance and support, schools, colleges and universities were unable to provide efficient and immediate resources to facilitate teaching and learning online. If schools already had the resources beforehand, if the government had engaged in better preparedness for situations like this, then it may have been the case that a smooth transition to online learning could have taken place. The government did however, provide money to fund initiatives such as the Oak National Academy and ResearchED whose personnel lacked knowledge and expertise in online learning. The UK government did, however, later go on to provide 1.3 million laptops and other digital devices. This acknowledgement of the importance of technology will undoubtedly have a positive impact on schools in the future but Covid has made it difficult to assess the results so far. There is no funding for government research to assess the value for money of this distribution of technology. Government research pre-2010 that is still relevant on this topic cannot be easily accessed and is not being referenced in this deployment of government funds.

Rhizomatic Learning In the background all these organizations have been realizing that “the prediction by the futurists and visionaries that learning in the twenty-first century will be radically different is not an overstatement. Learning can occur anywhere, anytime, and anyhow in the universally interconnected world. Technology afforded educators to provide flexible learning experiences whenever learners are ready. Knowledge transfer is no longer a fixed process but somewhat divergent and non-linear” (Swe Khine 2022). In their previous research members of all these organizations have given this learning phenomenon different names: Braided Learning, Communal Constructivism, Liminal Learning are some of the terms we discuss here. However, the term Rhizomatic Learning can be applied to all of these as an over-arching metaphor. Swe Khine goes on to say that the rhizomes learning metaphor was first coined by the poststructural philosophers Deleuze and Guattari. Cormier’s notion of rhizomatic learning allows educators to explore the process of learning with the rhizomatic lens. Rhizomatic learning posits that learning is a continuous, dynamic process, making connections, using multiple paths, without beginnings and which ends in a nomadic style. Here our authors bring together their research to illustrate this concept. Indeed, since the 1980s when the use of digital technology began to develop across the world, educators with vision have been experimenting with the new approaches to learning that have been made possible. Initial applications of this software such as Blackboard tended to replicate information transmission pedagogical models, where the model was that of students learning from lectures and from accompanying

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materials. Little opportunity was created for students to communicate with the teacher or one another. But these limitations were soon addressed by software such as Moodle that encouraged more intercommunication about the topic under review. At the same time educators were also seeing ways of combining different kinds of software so that other forms of learning were enhanced as well. In this chapter, we are referring particularly to the innovative uses of digital technologies for learning that were employed by professional organizations in online COPs and in an unconference mode that MirandaNet Fellows called a MirandaMod (Preston & Cuthell, 2012). The use of social media in professions enhanced the ways in which professionals could learn from each other all through the year, nationally and internationally. Face to face conferences were also improved as the delegates could comment on Twitter Walls in real time, develop collaborative concept maps () and participate in these activities even if they could not attend in person (Preston et al., 2021). More supporting products have been explored by a member of TPEA and MirandaNet. For example, Caldwell concludes that Covid has encouraged even more collaborative work amongst her students, including the production of learning artefacts (2022). What is pleasing is the positives that some teachers have derived from the experiences they and their students have had online in the pandemic (Hordatt et al., 2022). A typical comment from this study is by a student who said, ‘The online option was perfect for me and my situation’. Indeed, it appears from the experiences and practices of teachers during the COVID-19 pandemic, that stakeholders need to respect the expertise and professionalism of teachers and their ability to learn from experience. Whewell et al. (2022) illustrates this view by explaining the findings of the Northampton University Active Distance Learning (ADL) research and development project in which the practitioners highlight the process of transitioning to online delivery and finding creative offline ways of reaching students. During this process teachers at all levels demonstrated their capacity to be innovative and to take ownership of accelerating changes in how they think and work. It will be a triumph for the profession if, at last, we are trusted to learn from experience and implement appropriate solutions.

The Development of Rhizomatic Learning Theory by COPs For many years, discussion of online learning, or e–learning, has been pre–occupied with the practice of teaching online and the debate about whether being online is ‘as good as’ being offline. The authors contributing to this paper, members of the MirandaNet Fellowship, Naace, TPEA and MESHGUIDES professional COPS, describe an incubation period since 1992 through which they trace the emergence of new teaching and learning theories and practices based on their varied e-learning projects. Here, we describe the findings from our research projects in our communities identifying five interweaving strands: technologies for knowledge sharing; pedagogical theories underpinning collaborative online learning; roles for Communities

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of Practice (CoP) members in online debate; the impact of MOOCs on e-learning; and, the role of MOOCs in schools. It will be observed there are not necessarily boundaries between these strands: indeed, participants contribute their knowledge and experiences drawn from all of these. A key conclusion looking across all the findings is that professional collaboration and knowledge sharing is powerfully supported when the teachers, as learners, belong to a community of practice. Mentoring between peers who are all learners is key to these findings overall (Preston et al., 2021). In addition, evidence of the production of artefacts by the members of the learning group has grown during Covid (Hordatt et al., 2022). In the research findings, this article cites newly developed software that supports the Rhizomatic concept: Padlet, Jamboard, Book creator, Kahoot, Mentimeter, Adobe Spark and Powtoon. This is an extension of the work that Leask and Preston conducted in a Becta funded research project called ICT Tools for future teachers (Leask & Preston, 2009). At the end of this chapter we are experimenting with a potentially new dimension to rhizomatic presentation, which challenges the linear representation of knowledge. This visual approach called a MESHGuide is designed to help busy teachers absorb relevant findings they can quickly implement into teaching and learning practice.

The Underpinning Theories of Collaborative Learning When we conceptualize the process of learning it is usually twinned with teaching— whether in behaviourist terms of stimulus and response, or in its empty vessel formulation of information transmission. The metaphors we choose almost always move through the iterative cycle of unconscious incompetence to unconscious competence (Cuthell, 2022). These stages of learning are grounded in Piaget’s work (1953, 1972), which led to the ‘developmental folk myth’ that informs many teachers’ praxis. This expects learners to pass through a series of stages, each predicating its successor. This praxis contains two pillars of received wisdom: learner readiness, and stage competence. What this means for students is that, first, they are not expected to be able to cope with concepts and applications which have been determined to lie outside the bounds of their developmental stage: second, that each stage needs to be consolidated by practice. Much of Piaget’s research took as its focus the growth of mathematical and scientific concepts. Children’s ability to understand the tasks which they were set, and to explain them in appropriate terms, was taken as a demonstration of their competence: the language encoded the ‘scientific’ expectations imposed on the children. The methodology and findings have been questioned (Donaldson, 1987; Gardner, 1983, 1993; Seigel & Brainerd, 1978) but the original thesis still retains its power over pedagogy, teacher attitudes and the curriculum (Fig. 3.1). If we consider these stages as parts of the learning process we can apply them to the ways in which we learn and gain competence, rather than being tied to a

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H. Caldwell et al. Formal operational. Adolescence through adulthood Concrete operational. Ages 7 to 11 Preoperational. Toddlerhood (18-24 months) through early childhood (age 7)

Sensorimotor. Birth through ages 18-24 months

Fig. 3.1 Piaget’s four stages of intellectual (or cognitive) development

Symbolic representation (based on language) Iconic representation (based on images) Enactive representation (based on action) Fig. 3.2 Bruner’s stages of learning: ‘modes of representation’ learning with, and through, technology

specific chronology. We can see its development in the work of Bruner (1966, 1974) (Fig. 3.2). Salmon’s work on e-learning produced a competence sequence of learning acquisition in an online environment, in which learning is enhanced and changed through the use of communications technologies. Salmon’s work lead to other developments. Best be described as grounded theory, in that they are based on observation and experience of learning in technology-based environments, these models are Salmon’s 5-Step Theory; Braided Learning and Learning in Liminality (Fig. 3.3). These collaborative technologies create a liminal space—a term drawn from anthropology that describes a rite of passage, in which a person moves from one state of being to another. Participants are observed to be transformed in this liminal space by acquiring new knowledge, a new status and a new identity in the community. If learning is to be successful, this change is of critical importance. Whilst remote and informal learning is largely what has been understood about mobile learning, the concept can now be extended to include these informal spaces in which learning takes place—the liminal spaces that those who push the boundaries of digital possibilities now inhabit intellectually (Preston et al., 2009; Cuthell et al., 2011a, 2011b). The processes can be described as a form of Bricolage (Gardner, 1993), in which people build new knowledge from what is at hand. Current models for e-learning and the construction of knowledge through online communities tend to be predicated on stages that move from access and motivation, through information exchange and the construction of knowledge, to the development

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Development

Step 4:

Knowledge construction

Step 3:

Information exchange

Step 2:

Step 1:

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Online socialisation

Access and Motivation

Fig. 3.3 Salmon’s 5-step theory

of links with other communities. These were described by Salmon (2002) in her five stage model. Preece (2000) similarly identified five components of online community activities. Braided Learning Theory (Haythornthwaite et al., 2007; Preston, 2008; Preston & Cuthell, 2012) tracks the informal dynamic knowledge creation in a number of collaborative contexts such as MirandaNet and MirandaMods, in which participants move from the textual debate of a conventional mailing list, through to video conferencing, micro blogging contributions and collaborative concept maps. This collaborative technology creates a liminal space in which participants can be observed to be transformed by acquiring new knowledge, a new status and a new identity in the community. If learning is to be successful, this change is of critical importance. Whilst remote and informal learning is largely what has been understood about mobile learning, the concept can now be extended to include these informal spaces in which learning takes place—the liminal spaces in which those who push the boundaries of digital possibilities now inhabit intellectually (Cuthell et al., 2009) (Fig. 3.4). Braided Learning In Cuthell’s latest consideration of liminal learning he explains that affordances of Web 2.0 technologies have been explored by education professionals in the MirandaNet Community (MirandaNet, 2012) for a number of years (Cuthell et al., 2009, 2011a, 2011b; Cuthell, 2008, 2009a, 2009b; Preston & Cuthell, 2012), and have been combined to produce an approach to professional development that has enabled innovative developments to be evaluated in terms of their effectiveness for learning. Devices ranging from conventional desktop and laptop computers, through netbooks and tablets to smartphones, coupled with web-based applications—collaborative concept mapping; wikis; video streaming; web conferencing— have supported collaboration and community across a diverse range of settings, geographical locations and time zones.

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Step 6:

Braided Learning

Step 5:

Development

Step 4:

Knowledge construction

Step 3:

Step 2:

Step 1:

Information exchange

Online socialisation

Access and Motivation

Fig. 3.4 Towards collaboration: the construction of knowledge in an online environment. Adapted from: Salmon (2002) 5-Step Theory [9]; Cuthell and Preston (2005) Braided Learning

The informal dynamic knowledge creation in collaborative digital contexts occurs as participants move from textual communication to blogging, web creation, online video conferencing and other such collaborative environments. Interactive and collaborative technology can be seen as creating a liminal space—a passage through which a person moves from one state of being to another. Participants in this liminal space are transformed by acquiring new knowledge, a new status and a new identity in the community, a change that is of critical importance if learning is to be successful. Cuthell (2022) concludes that as participants have expanded and developed the range of technologies and affordances provided by digital technologies, so the concept of social constructivism has accommodated these and expanded into the liminal spaces that are no longer constrained by temporal or physical boundaries, and are therefore truly mobile. The extension of social constructivism theory builds on evidence that the praxis of those participants in liminal space is the one that constructs knowledge: “the working heuristic of discovery” (Bruner, 1974). They take for granted the constraints and difficulties within which they work. What they produce is a result of their discovery of the ways in which the information given, created and found, with the tools in their hands and the time available—all transmuted into their knowledge creation. The existential reality of learning is very different from the functionalist expectations of learning, yet so much policy is predicated on limited functionalist outcomes. In this context, many young people’s transformational learning experiences outside school are now significantly different from the traditional routes practiced in school. They use social networking sites to build a range of identities important to them, but their experience in this field rarely takes them into deeper learning stages. The ideas, concepts and attitudes create the knowledge they absorb: these diverse palimpsests are incorporated into their own truths that can lead to magical thinking.

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And, as each layer of their conceptual rhizome builds and extends, so these false concepts become more deeply embedded.

Asking Questions About Learning Theory and Practice MirandaNet research has drawn on members ‘perceptions about how theory has developed in the community. This online research and development in teaching and learning has been funded over three decades through Fellows’ research and development for: multinational companies; single schools, regional schools and academy chains; foreign governments impressed by UK’s achievements in this area in the 1990s and 2000s; the European Union; and, by government agencies like The Teacher Training Agency and Becta that were closed in 2010. During those years from 1994 to 2010 the education system was funded to experiment with learning platforms that later became compulsory in schools. MirandaNet members were engaged in a variety of funded projects about learning, but they were also propelled by a professional interest in how digital techniques might expand learning in all phases. Members of TPEA and MESHGuides were also involved in these projects. The authors have viewed the projects that have been undertaken to identify some overarching questions about e-learning under these five topics: Which technologies facilitate effective knowledge sharing? Which pedagogical theories underpin collaborative online learning? What roles should a CoP adopt in knowledge sharing and theory creation? How do MOOCS change the online learning landscape? How can a MESHGuide help teachers grasp significant findings quickly?

Methodology The MirandaNet Fellows have always been advocates of ethnography, a specific kind of qualitative observational research which provides an account of a particular culture, society, or community. An example is where fieldwork involves spending a year or more in another society, living with the local people and learning about their ways of life (Denzin & Lincoln, 2000). In this case, Fellows have evolved this methodology to observe their own practice online and draw out the theoretical stance. As part of this process Fellows advocated practice-based research as a professional learning method that we call iCatalyst. This contrasts with the traditional research approach, in which the teachers are observed by researchers who then go away and write a report that the teachers often do not see: in this way no change in practice is achieved. In the iCatalyst programme, the participants become the co-researchers commenting on their own practice and agreeing change within their sphere of influence. This is variously called Action Research or Practice Based research (Preston, 1995, 1999a, 1999b, 2007a, 2007b).

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Working with all key stakeholders, the participants identify what they want to gain from their investment in digital technologies. Crucial to success is the methodology of collecting of evidence of learning online and the ability to measure the impact of implementation. As co-researchers the participants build a professional community in order to amass the evidence they need to underpin the changes they want to make. This may be just a small group of e-mentors within a school or a region. Publishing case studies on the MirandaNet website continues to build the knowledge hub, where professionals can share and drive knowledge to a global audience of like-minded professionals.

Findings and Discussion The MirandaNet CoP has been experimenting with online learning since 1994 when the CoP had its first email listserv: the first virtual debating forum, accessible only to members, that was limited to text. Later, Fellows looked at video conferencing and the potential of Second Life, a virtual platform that could also be used for conferences, in which each participant designed an avatar to represent them in the virtual space. The use of appropriate technologies has been expanded as the membership has grown to more than one and a half thousand world-wide. Language to describe the processes of teaching and learning online in these different media increased and eventually new terms emerged for the techniques that MirandaNet Fellows were developing. The context was that of a European project focused around a Massive Open Online Course (MOOC), the general term for increased cohorts in online learning. During this project with five other European countries, Fellows refined their own approach, which had been built up over two decades, as a Community Online Open Course (COOC). During this period, we have developed theory and practice in a range of projects that we have collated under five interlinked areas: technologies for knowledge sharing; pedagogical theories underpinning collaborative online learning; roles for CoP members in online debate; the impact of MOOCs on learning; and, the role of MOOCs in schools.

Which Technologies Facilitate Effective Knowledge Sharing? In universities in the 1990s and 2000s across the world, online learning was mainly thought of as a means of storing resources and papers online so that students could access them and learn from them as they would notes from a lecture. The pedagogical approaches of collaboration and mentoring was not central to the design. There was no question that the first Virtual Learning Environments (VLE) such as Blackboard reinforced traditional information transmission pedagogy. The obvious development from this has been Specialist Online Open Courses (SPOCs) where teachers lecture

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Fig. 3.5 MirandaMods held in a variety of professional development contexts

and point their students to resources that will help them learn. Indeed, some SPOCs just provide routes through resources for learners. SPOCs can be very important in situations where the learner’s location is remote, they have to learn from home or funds do not exist for mentors and teachers. Over these early years the MirandaNet Fellows used their web spaces to research the innovative use of digital technologies in collaborative learning, knowledge creation and analysis of current professional knowledge; an approach that combines online learning and social connections. These ideas relate to; emerging practice in collaborative games (players engaging remotely in virtual worlds); remotely authored concept maps; social networking; and micro-blogging. These democratic, collaborative knowledge creation opportunities are causing ripples in social and cultural contexts although they not widely exploited for learning yet. Nevertheless MirandaNet, like many CoPs, would find it difficult to operate without wikis, microblogging, social networking, video-conferencing tools and remotely authored digital concept maps listservs, TwitterWalls, Second Life and the latest virtual conferencing software (Fig. 3.5). As the years progressed, MirandaNet Fellows knitted together several different technologies so that members in a physical room could debate with members who were unable to travel. The generic term, ‘unconference’ is one in which the input of all the participants has equal weight. This contrasts with a conventional conference with nominated speakers who take questions at the end of their talk. A ‘Mod’ is a Scottish word for a meeting and one of the members, Drew Buddy, coined the term MirandaMod for our debates using collation technologies that could be used to capture notes from which to publish articles, papers, and case studies to inform educators globally (Fig. 3.6). One method that has been adopted to share a growing body of knowledge is the collaborative digital concept map in which each participant in the debate can help to build the picture. The URL for this has been provided in the references as well as this

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Fig. 3.6 A remotely authored concept map on Mobile learning developed by MirandaNet members

image of the map as conventional A4 paper reproductions of knowledge building are inadequate for this kind of collaborative work.

Which Pedagogical Theories Underpin Collaborative Online Learning? MirandaNet Fellows are now relating their practice to the emergent term, Community Online Open Course (COOC). In this context, a MirandaMod creates a shared liminal space (see Fig. 3.3) that is important to building on professional knowledge: inchoate and chaotic as learners’ misconceptions, misunderstandings or simply lack of knowledge clash and co-mingle. ‘Liminal space’ is a term used generally to describe the dissolution of order in the individual brain during liminality that creates a fluid, malleable situation that enables new institutions, new customs and new expressions of commonality to become established, thus changing existing practice.

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Fig. 3.7 Liminal space theory adapted to include shared online spaces

MirandaNet Fellows, Cuthell and Preston (2005), Cuthell et al. (2009) argue that social liminal space can be conceptualized as anthropological and contains semiotic elements that can be visual as well as written. In the public sphere created at the interface of face-to-face and virtual communicative action, all learners, professional or otherwise, could act in the Brunerian sense (Bruner, 1974) as scaffolds to support each other as they traverse liminal space together to reach shared and individual enlightenment and transformation (Fig. 3.7). MirandaNet Fellows have adopted a metaphor to describe the theory underlying this collaborative knowledge creation that we call Braided Learning, (Preston, 2007a) the notion of plaiting ideas together. Professor Mike Sharples, a MirandaNet Senior Fellow, has also been working in the area of innovation in collaborative learning in annual reports that capture the latest developments (Sharples, 2012–2018). His Open University team offers two terms that help to describe the learning conditions demonstrated in a MirandaMod: ‘seamless learning’ and ‘rhizomatic learning’. Seamless learning defines the experience of continuity of learning across a combination of locations, times, technologies or social settings. This can be seen as learning journeys that can be accessed on multiple devices, flow across boundaries between formal and informal settings, and continue over life transitions such as school to university and workplace. Rhizomatic learning is derived from the metaphor of a plant stem that sends out roots and shoots that allows the plant to propagate itself through organic growth into the surrounding habitat (see Fig. 3.8). Seen as a model for the construction of knowledge, rhizomatic processes suggest the interconnectedness of ideas as well as boundless exploration across many fronts from different starting points. An educator reproduced this effect by creating a context within which the curriculum and knowledge are constructed by members of a learning community and which can be reshaped in a dynamic manner in response to environmental conditions. Sharples (2019) has now pulled together the key pedagogical ideas from the Open University Innovative Pedagogy annual reports into a comprehensive book. This community approach to professional development for teachers has been endorsed in a New Zealand review of how teachers move towards computing science in the new school curriculum (Thompson et al., 2013); a curriculum and professional development programme that has been widely praised (Clear & Bidois, 2005).

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Fig. 3.8 A rhizome providing a visual image for the way in which knowledge is constructed and emerges by adapting to environmental conditions (Source https:// propg.ifas.ufl.edu)

What Roles Should a CoP Adopt in Knowledge Sharing and Theory Creation? These social, conversational processes, as well as personal knowledge creation, can be linked into unbounded personal learning networks, that merge formal and informal media. Working with communities of teachers Leask, Preston and Younie, three more MirandaNet Fellows, have shown that teachers in communities can develop new theories and practice that are valuable for influencing policy at many levels (Leask & Preston, 2009; Leask & Younie, 2001). What we found is that these knowledge sharing events had to be well prepared and the stages well understood by the mentors, as can be seen in Fig. 3.9. In addition to this, a series of key roles that began to emerge as the CoP became more e-mature which is shown in Fig. 3.10 (Preston, 2007a, 2007b). Mentors have found that these roles which focus on performance are helpful in encouraging debate. One of the challenges for the CoP is to find the right balance between formal and informal communication. These are much the same roles that might be found in face-to-face debate. However, quick responses without eye-to-eye communication and body language can seem raw and confrontational. This is not, of course, an exhaustive list of potential roles, as these are likely to be as varied at the participants’ characters. The roles will also be different in different kinds of CoP although some will occur in every successful debate. Seeing these characters online is one of the appeals of online working. Nor are these roles or characters mutually exclusive. This environment is also a space where people who are shy, or who like to have time to answer, begin to display their in-depth knowledge in a way which would not be possible in a conference—an advantage that face to face communication cannot confer.

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Life cycle of an online discussion

Presenting a lively and engaging title

Setting the context and timeline

Invite the appropriate potential audience

Agreeing objectives

Deciding the timelines

Introductions

Welcoming newcomers

Eliciting permission to use the material generated in follow up reports

Acknowledgements of conflicting points of view

Posing stimulating questions

Interim summaries to include opposing arguments

Requests for information and references for different reporting exercises

Closure statements

Fig. 3.9 Collaborative knowledge creation stages

How Do MOOCs Change the Learning Landscape? This growing body of MirandaNet theory and practice, called Braided Learning, has been challenged by the advent of the Massive Open Online Course (MOOC) that can attract 45–50,000 participants who have no past history with each other. MOOCs seem to transform the ways in which adult learning is delivered, particularly informal and self-directed learning for those who cannot learn hope to learn in august institutions like Stanford University for reasons of access. In these circumstances the

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Provokers

Conciliators

Practitioners

Theorists

Contemptuous debaters

Respectful arguers

Lurkers

Limited female input

Generous purveyors of knowledge

Humourists

Strategists

Poets

Pessimists

Optimists

Stream of consciousness writers

Minimalists

Fig. 3.10 Debating roles in evidence in the Mirandalink/Naace debate

role of the e-mentor becomes problematic because of the number of mentors needed to cover the numbers of students and the cost of that model (Laurillard, 2014). The questions of e-mentoring has come up, in the first pilot of the EU LLL programme funded Hands-On ICT. MirandaNet is one of the partners charged with exploring the value of Massive Online Open Courses (MOOCs) and Community Online Open Courses (COOCs) in professional learning. In essence, Hands-On ICT was a holistic environment that provided teachers from higher education, vocational education and schools with everything they need to learn about making the right choice of ICT tools for a given pedagogical activity. The Hands-On ICT team from England, Greece, Slovenia, Spain and the Netherlands based the design of the MOOC on the contexts and practices that were identified in a report about existing e-learning projects already underway in Europe (Riviou et al., 2014). The participants questioned the underpinning e-mentoring principle of the course as well as perceiving a lack of clarity about the role of an e-mentor, because each student had different views. Also, the mentoring role implies responsibility for other students and a generosity with time that cannot always be relied on. Questions were raised about whether there should be tangible rewards for mentoring effort other than personal satisfaction like accreditation. Since no payment would be involved, qualifications in e-mentoring were mooted. But how would success in mentoring be judged: test scores; ICT competence; the quality of responses in a forum or whether the teachers have implemented these ideas in the classroom? Tests can validate knowledge as

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evidence: however, there should also be a way to validate performative evidence. One way is for the participant to upload an ICT artefact used to support learning and teaching, together with a commentary and evaluation. In this context the Hands-On team explored partnerships with teams from Learning Designer and Ingots. Global publication was another route that was expected to motivate the teachers to develop artefacts to share more widely with others like the Mapping Educational Specialist KnowHow (MESH) initiative. The major conclusion from the participants was that the designers of the Handson ICT MOOC needed to engage in some significant rethinking because the underlying theory that all students are the drivers in their education and will self-organize and network, is not necessarily the case. Some will only want an academic course focusing on information transmission.

How Can a MESHGuide Help Teachers Grasp Significant Findings Quickly? These findings raise again the difference between those who just want to learn what is necessary and those who want to join a professional CoP and contribute to new knowledge. Each position is valid, but learning in a MOOC can be a lonely affair if mentors are not there to support (Preston & Younie, 2014a, 2014b, 2014c). The process is explored through a project called Back to the Future. In this exemplar four professional organizations, TPEA, MirandaNet Fellowship, Naace and MESHGuides have been working together on a MESHGuide to establish the most important research findings in digital technologies that teachers will find useful today. Surprisingly several international reports published between 1990 and 2010, especially funded by Becta, the UK Government agency, have been cited by members. Since the incoming UK government closed Becta in 2010, members note that the quality and relevance of research is generally not of the same standard. The pandemic has increased the impact of these new methods of learning: face to face became difficult if not impossible possible. Every effort has been made to seek out the findings of innovative teachers and researchers during this period, even though they have been working under great difficulties.

New Ways Forward for Collaborative Learning Often in learning, if not in education as we know it in the Western world, we can see the future by looking back, reflecting and then projecting forward. This concept of learning as a spiral experience where previous learning is adapted and built on with new perspectives reshaping old concepts but in a more modern context, such as

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through the influence of new technologies, can be imagined in a similar way to the following diagram.

This idea of revisiting old learning to explore it in greater depth adds value to the idea of liminal space as raised earlier in this chapter, where ‘participants are observed to be transformed by acquiring new knowledge, a new status and a new identity in the community. If learning is to be successful, this change is of critical importance’. This also links closely with the concept of learning as praxis and communities creating their own curriculum based on need, interest and experience. What the concept of rhizomatic learning provides us is with new ways of looking at and deepening learning in this sustainable way, particularly where learning is shared through collaborative communities and enterprises. The role of collaborative technologies is therefore crucial to the open access of learning where ownership is well and truly in the hands of participants in the collaborative process. This is where collaborative programmes and initiatives such as MESHGuides provide illustrative examples of the process of rhizomatic learning and demonstrate the power of participant collaboration. In explanation, MESHGuides may initially be produced by a community of practice or interest made up of people with experience and expertise within a specific area of learning but they are open and dynamic processes which can be adapted, added to and developed by new participants in the community who can contribute to the knowledge transfer process by bringing in their own ideas and learning to share with others.

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To illustrate the process we have developed a MESHGuide about Rhizomatic Learning. This guide is too big to publish in a conventional book so we have mounted it on the MESHGuides website.1 In fact, one of the problems about Rhizomatic Learning for academics is that much of this branching collaborative work is hard to illustrate because it draws on the new affordances of technology that allow us to build models, experiment and grow. Technology also gives us the option to change our minds as we learn from others whereas a published book is unalterable except as a revised edition. In essence although books have been and remain valuable in the knowledge creation process they are no longer as the only way we can share. In addition the book tends to accentuate the linear process. However, in honour of this book, we have produced a snapshot of the Rhizomatic Learning MeshGuide which is intended to make assimilation quicker for busy teachers (Fig. 11). We are also experimenting in MESHGuides in the use of concept maps that can be collaboratively produced. This one was created during a face to face MirandaMod in Bath in June 2022.2 (Fig. 12) This was challenging to produce because an academic book is usually in A4 portrait mode whereas concept maps like many other illustrations need to be landscape mounted. The concept map not only allows participants within a community of practice (CoP) to share and develop ideas but to also share the process of their thinking and reasoning in making connections between one idea and another. They are a visual representation of a learning conversation about taking an idea and developing it in a collaborative and dynamic way. The CoP model of Rhizomatic Learning that we describe here, exemplifies what Dave Cormier exposed as being a critical aspect of rhizomatic learning and which represents a dynamic future for both formal and informal learning in which ‘students have the opportunity to enter the community themselves and impact the shape of its curriculum as well as their own learning’. Writing in his article Rhizomatic Education: Community as Curriculum (2008) Cormier (2008) goes on to say ‘The role of the instructor in all of this is to provide an introduction to an existing professional community in which students may participate—to offer not just a window, but an entry point into an existing learning community’. His comments explain the idea that rhizomatic learning not only offers a model of future learning but also explains how learners can participate and dynamically contribute to the learning by choosing their own entry point to a learning community, shaping its direction of learning and in so doing influence their own learning too. It is a dynamic and exciting future for learning when viewed in this way.

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Meshguides.org (http://www.meshguides.org/guides/node/2422). https://new.meshguides.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/09/Online-learning-different-approachesto-rhizomatic-learning-1.pdf. 2

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Conclusions Walled garden, or waste land? What are the roots that clutch, what branches grow Out of this stony rubbish? Son of man, You cannot say, or guess, for you know only A heap of broken images, where the sun beats, And the dead tree gives no shelter, the cricket no relief, And the dry stone no sound of water. Only There is shadow under this red rock, (Come in under the shadow of this red rock), And I will show you something different from either Your shadow at morning striding behind you Or your shadow at evening rising to meet you; I will show you fear in a handful of dust.

The Waste Land, lines 19–30. T.S. Eliot. In our treatment of rhizomatic learning, if we consider the metaphor and its initial assumptions of connection and heterogeneity, with any point being connected to any other, then the collaborative activities of the professional Communities of Practice detailed above have connected, and continue to connect, with one another and work to develop new ideas and cross-fertilize existing ones. Members link to other communities across national barriers and time zones. The underlying knowledge of these CoPs is used to generate new ideas and practice, with new shoots emerging in new places. It is an existential state of professional awareness that precludes stasis. At the same time as welcoming this new knowledge terrain, in which a constantly changing series of networks throws up emerging shoots in new places, it would be politic to tread carefully, warily. Without cartographic guidelines it is easy to connect the wrong nodes, cultivate the wrong shoots. In the same way as an invasive species can burst through a fence and over-run our intellectual patch, so the false concepts and fake news that have overrun parts of our world and our understanding of it must be guarded against. A number of plants that spread by rhizomes are invasive weeds. The rhizomes make these plants aggressive and vigorous: new plants emerge from a tiny piece of rhizome. Getting rid of them is difficult and problematic. Unless every little piece is removed the plant will spring up once more, unbidden. In this way a rhizome may be broken, but will start up again on one of its old lines, or on new lines. As will fake news, false concepts and conspiracy theories. Fear, in a handful of dust.

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Appendix

APPENDIX Snapshot: Online Collaborative Learning; different approaches A Snapshot is a executive summary of a Case Study of a MESHGuide used in practice which highlights their context, outcomes, real and any potential benefits resulting from this collaboration with MESH. This includes connections to other issues and the potential for application by others in schools and other educational settings. Title: Online

learning: different approaches

Background information: The aim of this MESHGuide is to provide knowledge to university and school teachers about methods of learning collaboratively online. The guide brings together research about effective online learning that has been developed since 1992. Some research has been derived from practice based research practices where the teachers themselves have undertaken research in the classroom with their students.These students then decide which of their findings they can feasibly implement. The context is the exploration of the value of democratic learning at online and face to face conferences and specialist gatherings in which everyone involved is treated as an expert, not just the speaker. In fact, several speakers are asked to contribute to a learning session with just key ideas from their practice, experience and research. Participants have recognised the power of this phenomenon and said that the notion draws on the impact of Citizens Assemblies and government ‘Nudge’ units and can be described politically as the pursuit of deliberative democracy. Others have simplified this notion as circle time for grownups.

Relevant area(s) of research/education: The rhizomes learning metaphor was first coined by the poststructural philosophers Deleuze and Guattari. Cormier's notion of rhizomatic learning allows educators to explore the process of learning with the rhizomatic lens. Rhizomatic learning posits that learning is a continuous, dynamic process, making connections, using multiple paths, without beginnings and which ends in a nomadic style. Recognising the power of collaborative learning between participants who have knowledge and expertise in a chosen field. The premise is that learning can occur anywhere, anytime, and anyhow in the universally interconnected world. Technology afforded educators to provide flexible learning experiences whenever learners are ready. Knowledge transfer is no longer a fixed process but somewhat divergent and non-linear (Swe Khine, 2022). Before this Rhizomatic Learning metaphor emerged in the international context, research members of all the professional organisations, TPEA, MIrandaNet Fellowship, Naace and MESHGuides have given this learning phenomenon different names: Braided Learning, Communal Constructivism and Liminal Learning are some of the terms we discuss here. However, the term Rhizomatic Learning can be applied to all of these as an overarching metaphor that is now recognised internationally. Examples: Liminal thinking (Cuthell) is a term for informal dynamic knowledge creation in collaborative digital contexts which occurs as participants move from textual communication to blogging, web creation, online video conferencing and other such collaborative environments. Interactive and collaborative technology can be seen as creating a liminal space –a passage through which a person moves from one state of being to another. Participants in this liminal space are transformed by acquiring new knowledge, a new status and a new identity in the community, a change that is of critical importance if learning is to be successful. Cuthell concludes that as participants have expanded and developed the

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range of technologies and affordances provided by digital technologies, so the concept of social constructivism has accommodated these and expanded into the liminal spaces that are no longer constrained by temporal or physical boundaries, and are therefore truly mobile. Communal Constructivism (Leask and Younie) Braided Learning (Preston) MirandaNet Fellows have adopted a metaphor to describe the theory underlying this collaborative knowledge creation that they call Braided Learning the notion of plaiting ideas together. Some of their research focuses on the ways in which community leaders can identify the stages in the life cycle of an online discussion and also to encourage all the participants to contribute online by giving them different roles in the development of ideas. MirandaMods (DrewBuddy) As the years progressed, MirandaNet Fellows knitted together several different technologies so that members in a physical room could debate with members who were unable to travel. The generic term, ‘unconference’ is one in which the input of all the participants has equal weight. This contrasts with a conventional conference with nominated speakers who take questions at the end of their talk. A ‘Mod’ is a Scottish word for a meeting and one of the members, Drew Buddy, coined the term MirandaMod for MirandaNet debates using a collation of technologies that could be used to capture notes from which to publish articles, papers, and case studies to inform educators globally.

Keywords:. networks communities professional development autonomous learning technology affordances Outcomes: 1. sharing is powerfully supported when the teachers, as learners, belong to a Community of Practice (CoP) . If we consider the metaphor of rhizomes learning, then the initial assumptions of connection and heterogeneity, with any point being connected to any other, then the collaborative activities of the professional Communities of Practice detailed above have connected, and continue to connect, with one another and work to develop new ideas and cross-fertilise existing ones. 2. Members link to other communities across national barriers and time zones. Direct benefits/How MESHGuides have ‘come alive’ in this project: ▪ MESHGuides can be used by anyone, parents, practitioners, volunteers anytime, anywhere in the world ▪ Direct impact on people’s lives in beneficial way – putting ownership of learning and education back to teachers and learners ▪ Rapid response to an identified need – this has positive implications for individual schools and networks seeking to find evidence-based solutions to perceived needs Indirect benefits/Unexpected or connected issues/impact that this project has provoked: The underlying knowledge of these CoPs is used to generate new ideas and practice, with new shoots emerging in new places. It is an existential state of professional awareness that precludes stasise

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Further questions to explore: Which technologies facilitate effective knowledge sharing? Which pedagogical theories underpin collaborative online learning? What roles should a CoP adopt in knowledge sharing and theory creation? How do MOOCS change the online learning landscape? How can a MESHGuide help teachers grasp significant findings quickly?

Other relevant MESHGuides: Technology Enhanced Learning Communities http://www.meshguides.org/guides/node/880

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Using the ideas in this Snapshot to make connections with issues/priorities within my own setting How is what I have read within this Snapshot similar or different to what happens within my setting?

How might I adapt the ideas in this Snapshot case study to use and apply something similar within my own setting?

How might we use MESHGuides in my own setting to support, inform and develop these ideas?

What other research or evidence would be helpful to develop and extend these ideas?

Other comments about MESHGuides might help my planning and delivery of teaching and learning:

References Access several publications on Braided learning and associated topics on http://www.mirandanet. ac.uk/researchexchange/publications/. Last accessed 050614 Bruner, J. S. (1966). Towards a theory of instruction. MIT Press.

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Bruner, J. S. (1974). Beyond the information given. George Allen and Unwin Ltd. Clear, T., & Bidois, G. (2005). Fluency in information technology—FITNZ: An ICT curriculum meta-framework for New Zealand high schools. Bulletin of Applied Computing and IT, 3(3). Cuthell, J. (2008). The role of a web-based community in teacher professional development. International Journal of Web Based Communities, 2(8), 115–139. Cuthell, J. (2009a). Thinking and changing practice: Collaborative online professional development. In: R. Carlsen, K. McFerrin, R. Weber, & D. A. Willis (Eds.), Proceedings of SITE 2009a (pp. 2264–2269). Association for the Advancement of Computing in Education. Cuthell, J. (2009b). Thinking things through. Collaborative online professional development. In: J. O. Lindberg & A. D. Olofsson (Eds.), Online learning communities and teacher professional development: Methods for improved education delivery (pp. 154–167). Information Science Reference. Cuthell, J. P., & Preston, C. (2005). Teaching in ICT-rich environments—using e-learning to create a knowledge base for 21st century teachers. In: M. Leask & N. Pachler (Eds.), Learning to teach using ICT in the secondary school (2nd ed., vol. 1, pp. 320–332). London Routledge Communities. Cuthell, J., Cych, L. & Preston, C. (2011a). Learning in liminal spaces. In: K. Rummler, J. Seipold, E. Lübcke, P. Norbert & G. Attwell (Eds.), Mobile learning: Crossing boundaries in convergent environments. https://www.londonmobilelearning.net/downloads/MLCB_BOA_Bremen-2011a_Cro ssing-Boundaries-full_2011a-03-18.pdf Cuthell, J., Cych, L., & Preston, C. (2011b). Learning in liminal spaces [Presentation]. Mobile learning: Crossing boundaries in convergent environments conference. University of Bremen. http://www.virtuallearning.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2011b/03/Liminal-Spaces-Bremen.pdf Cuthell, J., Preston, C., Cych, L., & Keuchel, T. (2009). iGatherings: From professional theory and practice to praxis in work based teaching and learning. WLE Centre, Institute of Education, University of London. http://www.wlecentre.ac.uk/cms/index.php?option=com_content&task= view&id=343&Itemid=85 Cuthell. J. (2022). Liminal learning, advancing education. Naace Journal Spring Edition. https:// www.naace.co.uk/pub-adveducationjournal.html Denzin, N., & Lincoln, Y. S. (2000). The handbook of qualitative research (2nd ed). Sage publications. Donaldson, M. (1987). Children’s minds. Fontana. Dorner, J., Field, J., Sparrowhawk, A., & Preston, C. (2002). How to Think.com. Oracle Education Foundation. https://www.mirandanet.org.uk/associates/oracle_think.htm Gardner, H. (1983). Frames of mind. Heinemann. Gardner, H. (1993). The unschooled mind. Fontana. Haythornthwaite, C., Andrews, R., Kazmer, M. M., Bruce, B. C., Montague, R. A., & Preston, C. (2007). Theories and models of and for online learning. First Monday, 12(8). https://doi.org/10. 5210/fm.v12i8.1976 Hordatt G. C., Younie, S., Leask, M. & Caldwell, H. (2022). The precious silver lining in this crisis: Positives that have emerged from teaching during Covid. Advancing Education, Naace Journal, Spring Edition. https://www.naace.co.uk/pub-adveducationjournal.html Laurillard, D. (2014). Hits and myths: Moocs may be a wonderful idea but they are not viable. The Times Education Supplement. Leask, M., & Preston, C. (2009). ICT tools for future teachers. Brunel University for BECTA http:// www.beds.ac.uk/research/ired/groups/marilyn-leask/publications Leask, M., & Younie, S. (2001). Building on-line communities for teachers: Ideas emerging from research. In M. Leask (Ed.), Issues in teaching using ICT (pp. 223–232). Routledge. Piaget, J. (1953). The origin of intelligence in the child. Routledge and Kegan Paul. Piaget, J. (1972). The principles of genetic epistemology. Routledge and Kegan Paul. Preece, J. (2000). Online communities: Designing usability. John Wiley & Sons. Preston, C. (1995). Not just a load of old Tosh: A ground breaking inservice training alliance between teachers and industry. Times Higher Education Supplement.

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Preston, C. (1999a). Building online professional development communities for schools, professional associations or LEAs. In M. Leask & N. Pachler (Eds.), Learning to teach ICT in secondary schools (pp. 210–225). Routledge. Preston, C. (1999b). On-line teacher communities. TeacherNet Journal, Hobsons Educational. Preston, C. (2004). Learning to use ICT in Classrooms: teachers’ and trainers’ perspectives: an evaluation of the English NOF ICT teacher training programme (1999–2003): summary, full evaluation report and emergent trends for teacher educators and staff-trainers. London, funded by the Teacher Training Agency. Paper is here. Preston, C. (2007a). Braided Learning: promoting active professionals in education. In: C. Haythornthwaite, R. Andrews, M. M. Kazmer, B. C. Bruce, R.-A. Montague, & C. Preston (2007a). Theories and models of and for online learning. First Monday, 12(8). https://doi.org/10.5210/fm.v12i8. 1976 Preston, C. (2007b). Social networking between professionals: what is the point? [Presentation]. Self-regulated Learning in Technology Enhanced Learning Environments: Individual Learning and Communities of Learners, Amsterdam, Shaker Verlag. Preston, C. (2008). Braided learning; an emerging process observed in e-communities of practice. International Journal of Web Based Communities, 4(2), 220–243. Preston, C. (2009). Exploring semiotic approaches to analysing multidimensional concept maps using methods that value collaboration. Handbook of Research on Collaborative Learning Using Concept Mapping. P. Torres and R. Marriott. Hershey, Pennsylvania/USA, Information Science Reference. Preston, C., & Cuthell, J. (2012). MirandaMods: From practice to praxis in informal professional learning contexts. In C. Jimoyiannis (Ed.), Research on e-learning and ICT in education (pp. 17– 28). Springer. Preston, C., & Younie, S. (2014a). When the funding ends: Using the handson ICT MOOC as a key element in research and development projects [Presentation]. Make Learn conference, Human Capital without Borders: Knowledge and Learning for Quality of Funded by the EU ICT Industry, Portoroc, Slovenia. http://mirandanet.org.uk/researchexchange/eu-handson-ict/ Preston, C., & Younie, S. (2014b). From a community of practice perspective learning in a MOOC can be a lonely business [Presentation]. MoodleMoot conference, Korper, Slovenia. http://mir andanet.org.uk/researchexchange/eu-handson-ict/ Preston, C., & Younie, S. (2014c). Mentoring in a digital world: What are the issues? [Presentation]. Key competencies in informatics and ICT (KEYCIT 2014c) conference proceedings. https://pub lishup.uni-potsdam.de/opus4-ubp/frontdoor/index/index/docId/7032 Preston, C., Younie, S., & Hramiak, A. (2021). Learning alone or learning together? How can teachers use online technologies to innovate pedagogy? In A. Marcus-Quinn & T. Hourigan (Eds.), Handbook for online learning contexts: Digital, mobile and open (pp. 257–273). Springer. https://www.springer.com/gp/book/9783030673482 Riviou K., Barrera C. F., & Domingo M. F. (2014). Design principles for the online continuous professional development of teachers [Presentation]. In: 14th IEEE international conference on advanced learning technologies (ICALT 2014), IEEE Computer Society, Athens, Greece. Salmon, G. (2002). E-tivities: The key to active online learning. Kogan Page. Seigel, L., & Brainerd, C. (Eds.). (1978). Alternatives to Piaget. Academic Press. Sharples, M. (2012–2018). Innovating pedagogy 2012. The Open University. www.open.ac.uk/ blogs/innovating/ Sharples, M. (2019). Practical pedagogy: 40 new ways to teach and learn. Routledge. Thompson, D., Bell. T., Andreae, P., & Robins, A. (2013). The role of teachers in implementing curriculum changes [Presentation]. In: Proceeding of the 44th ACM technical symposium on computer science education. ACM, Denver, Colorado, USA. Turvey, K., & Pachler, N. (2020a). Teachers have been let down by a decade of inaction on digital technologies. The conversation. https://theconversation.com/teachers-have-been-let-down-by-adecade-of-inaction-on-digital-technologies-142938

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Turvey, K., & Pachler, N. (2020b). Design principles for fostering pedagogical provenance through research in technology supported learning. Computers & Education, 146, 1–14. https://doi.org/ 10.1016/j.compedu.2019.103736 Wenger, E. (1998). Communities of practice: Learning. Cambridge University Press. Wenger, E., McDermott, R., & Snyder, W. M. (2002). Cultivating communities of practice: A guide to managing knowledge. Harvard Business School Press.

NB All Images Are Under the Creative Commons License at: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/ Reference websites Collaborative Digital Concept Map One. at: http://www.mirandanet.ac.uk/mirandamods/archive/ the-role-of-communities-of-practice-in-teaching-and-learning/ Hands-On ICT Project at: http://project.handsonict.eu/project/ iCatalyst Practice based research programme at: https://mirandanet.ac.uk/professional-develo pment-approach/ INGOTS at: http://theingots.org/community/about Learning Design support Environment at: https://sites.google.com/a/lkl.ac.uk/ldse/ Mapping Educational Specialist knowHow MESH at: http://www.meshguides.org/ MirandaNet Fellowship at: www.mirandanet.ac.uk MirandaMods at: https://mirandanet.ac.uk/what-is-a-mirandamod/ Naace at: naace.co.uk Technology Pedagogy and Education at: tpea.ac.uk Becta Reassembled. MirandaNet at: https://mirandanet.ac.uk/becta-reassembled/ Whewell, E., Caldwell, H., Frydenberg, M. & Andone, D., 24 Jan 2022, In: Education and Information Technologies. 27, 5, p. 6691–6713 23 p.

Wider Reading Communities of Practice in Lockdown See Keddell, E., & Beddoe, L. (2020). The tyranny of distance: The social effects practice adaptations resulting from covid-19 lockdown rules. Aotearoa New Zealand Social Work, 32(2), 41–45.

MOOCs in Schools See Beutner, M. (2020). Media in Times of Corona- The Use of MOOCs by Teachers and Trainers. In Proceedings of EdMedia + Innovate Learning (pp, 1109–1115). Online, The Netherlands: Association for the Advancement of Computing in Education (AACE). https://www.learntechlib. org/primary/p/217425/

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SPOCs in Higher Education See Huang, R., Tlili, A., Chang, T., Zhang, X., Nascimbeni, F., & Burgos, D. (2020). Disrupted classes, undisrupted learning during COVID-19 outbreak in China: Application of open educational practices and resources. Smart Learning Environments, 19(10), 1–15. https://doi.org/10.1186/s40561020-00125-8

Liminal Spaces in Organisations See Zundel, M., Mackay, D., Macintosh, R., & Mckenzie, C. (2020). Between the bridge and the door: Exploring liminal spaces of identity formation through video diaries. In M. Brown (Ed.), The oxford handbook of identities in organizations (pp. 340–357). Oxford University Press.

E-Mentoring See Tinoco-Giraldo, H., Sánchez, E. M. T., & García-Peñalvo, F. (2020). E-mentoring in higher education: A structured literature review and implications for future research. Sustainability, 12(11), 2–23. MOOCs in schools and universities see a range of high impact research from the British Journal of Educational Technology, focusing on various aspects of online learning and teaching in COVID19: Online Teaching and Learning Virtual Collection related articles at: https://doi.org/10.1002/ (ISSN)1469-3518.online.teaching.and.learning.covid19

Chapter 4

Applying Deleuzian and Guattarian Principle of Asignifying Rupture in Students’ Online Rhizomatic Engagement Patterns Chaka Chaka and Tlatso Nkhobo

Introduction The process of online learning in relation to online engagement of students in a learning environment is uncontrollable and cannot be restricted or bounded to a set online discussion forum (ODF) topic. Against this backdrop, asignifying rupture was adopted as one of the principles of rhizomatic orientation that the two philosophers (Deleuze & Guattari, 1987) introduced to challenge mainstream thinking in the ecosystem of teaching and learning. Asignifying rupture portrays rhizomatic connections, disconnections, convergence, and divergence of ideas in a learning environment as evidence that the learning process is fluid and non-linear (Deleuze & Guattari, 1987; Johnston, 2018; Nkhobo & Chaka, 2021). In this chapter, asignifying rupture principle was applied to portray the converging and diverging coherence of the emerging key themes in online discussion forum topics as set out on myUnisa. The latter is the name given to Moodle as a learning management system used at the University of South Africa (UNISA). The teaching and learning process, especially in online learning environments (OLEs), is constantly in a shape-shifting mutation in that it cannot be bounded to any predetermined boundaries (ODF topics) as espoused by the asignifying rupture principle. Similarly, the emerging key themes were also studied with the intention to reveal the converging coherence, in other words, with respect to those key themes identified as having relations and connections to ODF topics. In addition, converging and diverging coherence in the identified themes were analysed using thematic analysis. The concept of a rhizome by Deleuze and Guattari (1987) provides alternative ways in which mainstream thinking in relation to the teaching and learning processes can be transformed and viewed differently. Rhizomatic patterns in this chapter refer to the different online engagement patterns that students often generate in terms of their interactions on the myUnisa’s C. Chaka (B) · T. Nkhobo University of South Africa, Pretoria, South Africa e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2023 M. S. Khine (ed.), Rhizome Metaphor, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-19-9056-4_4

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ODF threads. In line with a rhizomatic thinking, a Deleuzian asignifying rupture is regarded as a metamorphosis, a construct, and an approach that can be applied to critique and as an alternative to the orthodox view of teaching and learning. Moreover, the notion of a rhizome involves a process of learning that does not have a beginning nor an end (Deleuze & Guattari, 1987; Mackness et al., 2016; Nkhobo & Chaka, 2021). This means that it consists of constant continuation and discontinuation of networked strands, especially in OLEs. On this basis, the chapter argues that asignifying ruptures in online rhizomatic engagement patterns of students may lead to sub-variant topics within set topics, which can be related (converging coherence) or unrelated (diverging coherence) to myUnisa’s ODFs. This development signifies that a learning process is non-linear and non-hierarchal (Guerin, 2013; Nkhobo & Chaka, 2021). Online student engagement is understood to involve many variables. For instance, Chaka and Nkhobo (2019) point out that some of its dimensions are emotional, behavioural, cognitive, and academic engagement (also see Chaka et al., 2022; Chen et al., 2018), while Dahleez et al. (2021) offer behavioural, cognitive, emotional, and agentic engagement as part of its dimensions. This emphasizes the complex nature of student engagement, which for distance OLEs such as those of UNISA can even be more complex. Against this background, the asignifiying rupture principle was employed to explore various eruptions inherent in the teaching and learning process that students and lecturers participated in through their online engagement activities. Students, whose rhizomatic online engagement patterns were used in this study, were registered for three modules, Academic Language and Literacy in English (ENG1503), Applied English Language for Foundation and Intermediate Phase: Home Language (ENG1515), and Creative Writing for Public Relations (ENG2604), in the Department of English Studies, at UNISA, in 2022. The study had the following three research questions (RQs): • RQ1: What are the erupting themes with converging and diverging coherence on the myUnisa’s ODF threads? • RQ2: What are the rhizomatic frequencies of the converging and diverging themes on the myUnisa’s ODF? • RQ3: What are rhizomatic visualisations of the erupting themes as generated by the MS Power BI software application tool?

Literature Review The principle of asignifying rupture has been used in research studies that do not necessarily focus on online student engagement patterns. Examples of such studies are Boldt and Valente (2021), Harrison (2020), Ko and Bal (2019), Moradi and Maleki (2021), Tillmanns and Filho (2020), and Westman and Bergmark (2019). Consequently, this chapter sought to explore emerging rhizomatic asignifying ruptures in terms of converging and diverging themes related to online student engagement as this area appears to be under-researched (see Nkhobo & Chaka, 2021). In contrast, a lot of

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studies have been conducted on online student engagement patterns that have investigated this area purely in a traditional sense by focusing on cognitive, behavioural, emotional, and academic engagement. One set of these studies includes the following: Ahmed et al. (2020), Chaka (2020), Chaka and Nkhobo (2019), Chaka et al. (2022), Jinot (2020), Khlaif et al. (2021), Muir et al. (2019), Salas-Pilco et al. (2022), Yates et al. (2020), and Zayabalaradjane (2020). Many studies were conducted during the Covid-19 pandemic with a view to teaching and learning on various online platforms. Similarly, another set of studies has also been conducted in which student engagement patterns have been investigated. Some of these studies include: Avcı and Ergün (2022), Bond et al. (2020), Bowden et al. (2021), Clinton and Kelly (2019), Da Silva et al. (2019), Farrell and Brunton (2020), Kim et al. (2020), Moubayed et al. (2020), Nkomo and Nat (2021), Onyema et al. (2019), and Sari (2020). In contrast to most of the studies mentioned above, there are few studies that have exclusively foregrounded the rhizomatic perspective in online student interactions. Some of these studies are Balcom et al. (2019), Brailas (2020), Chaka and Nkhobo (2019), and Nkhobo (2022). On the one hand, the aim of the Avcı and Ergün’s (2022) study was to investigate the online engagement behaviours of undergraduate students who were registered for a computer literacy course, whose participation was on Moodle. This study comprised 65 students enrolled at a private university in Turkey and was conducted between 2016 and 2017. It sought to aggregate student engagement, information literacy, and academic performance. The students’ engagement patterns were retrieved using the LMS framework which included students’ usage data in log files. The LMS showed 15 variables, of which only six were chosen to analyse students’ LMS engagement patterns. The interactions of students were clustered as low-level participation and high-level participation and were analysed in terms of student engagement, information literacy, and academic performance. This study found that students who were categorized under high-level participation were those who were active participants on Moodle. In relation to information literacy, the study found no significant differences among the participants. The high-level participation students performed better in terms of the academic outcomes than the low-level participants. The difference between the current study and Avcı and Ergün’s (2022) study is that it mainly focused on the emerging rhizomatic ruptures of key themes and their frequencies on ODFs. On the other hand, Da Silva and Barbosa’s (2019) study was exploratory in nature, and adopted a case study approach. Their study was conducted at a private university in Brazil among students who were registered for fully online Business Administration and Accounting majors. The study used social network analysis to analyse the interaction patterns on ODFs. The main aim of the study was to analyse and characterize student engagement patterns on ODFs. The study found identical metrics: it discovered that Accounting Sciences students were more interactive in the first semester, but that their interaction decreased in the second semester. Similarly, it found that students participated actively in the first semester and their interaction increased towards the end of their majors. Overall, the study discovered that Accounting major students participated more than the Business Administration major students on ODFs. It also established that assignments, WhatsApp group requests, and feedback were the most talked about items on ODFs. Moreover, it found that

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both Business Administration and Accounting Sciences students engaged frequently about assignments on ODFs. This study and the current study share two related aspects: the frequency of interactions and the differences of the engagement patterns on different subjects. However, their point of departure is that the current study sought to explore rhizomatic ruptures in students’ online engagement patterns in terms of emerging key themes as generated and visualized by MS Power BI software applications, respectively. In a similar, but different context, Sari’s (2020) study was exploratory, too. It consisted of 165 students who were registered for a fully online subject, Academic Reading, in the English Literature Department and the English Education Department at UNISA. Student engagement patterns were classified as active students, problem solvers, knowledge seekers, viewers and collectors, bystanders, and passive students. The study found three student roles with a high frequency: active learners, problem solvers, and knowledge seekers. Active students had the highest frequency overall, as they asked most questions and posted most answers and responses on ODFs. They were followed by problem solvers and knowledge seekers, whose frequency was a tie. These groups of students tried to independently solve problems by reading study materials for solutions. They also asked for assistance from fellow students and from their lecturers. The current study differs from Sari’s (2020) study in that it sought to advance the idea that student engagement patterns cannot be linear and be bounded to set ODF topics.

Research Methodology Method This was a case study research in that it focused on three modules (ENG1503, ENG2604, and ENG1515) in the Department of English Studies at UNISA (cf. Edmonds & Kennedy, 2016; Goertz & Mahoney, 2012; Leavy, 2017). Five ODF topics from each module were selected for investigation. For example, Edmonds and Kennedy (2016: 143) posit that a case study involves “in-depth, real-time, or retrospective analysis of a case.” The present study employed qualitative and quantitative approaches (Edmonds & Kennedy, 2016; Goertz & Mahoney, 2012; Leavy, 2017). The qualitative approach was utilized to investigate online student written conversations or interactions posted on Moodle as part of various threads related to the five ODF topics. The quantitative approach was adopted to determine the number of frequencies of online student interactions in the five selected ODF topics and to establish the number of communication threads that emanated from this communication.

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Sampling The current study was conducted in the first semester of 2022. It used a convenience sampling technique to purposively select the three modules mentioned above. In addition, five topics were purposively selected from each one of the selected modules in order to investigate the converging and diverging coherence in online student engagement patterns, which were regarded as asignifying ruptures on the myUnisa’s Moodle ODFs. From the three aforesaid modules, the following students were purposively chosen from the three aforesaid modules: ENG1503 = 150 students; ENG1515 = 100 students; and ENG2604 = 125 students: ENG1503 = 150 students; ENG1515 = 100 students; and ENG2604 = 125 students. So, altogether, there were 375 students who participated in this study. The number of students’ interactions chosen from ODF thread messages varied across the three modules. Five topics selected from ENG1503 were: Announcement for question 2 of assignment 1; Assignment 02 Livestream; Assignment 02 recording link available; Please submit your assignment 01; and Moodle and myUnisa is free. Concerning ENG1515, the following five topics were chosen Accessing and uploading; I can’t find my first assignment; Submission; Uploading and submitting an assignment; and WhatsApp group. In respect of ENG2604, the following topics were selected: Update regarding due dates for ENG2604; Introduce yourself ; New ENG2604 schedule; Update lecturer has rejoined the team; and Update regarding due dates for ENG2604. The three sets of five topics were selected because they displayed interactions among the participants and had the potential to exhibit converging and diverging coherence. Before the study was carried out, ethical clearance was secured and student consent to participate in the study was sought. The ethical clearance certificate to conduct the study was granted by the College of Human Sciences Research Ethics Committee and its certificate number is 90258495_CREC_CHS_2021 and 2021_RPSC_050.

Data Collection Procedure As pointed out above, online student interactions were harvested from Moodle after the 375 students selected from the three modules had posted their respective responses to five ODF topics related to each module mentioned earlier. These posted responses were turned into three data sets, with each data set representing responses from each module. All the responses were in the form of posted student messages.

Eng1503 The ODF threads on the first topic, Announcement for question, 2 began from 01 March 2022 to 29 of March 2022. The second ODF threads on the topic, Assignment 02 live stream, started from 24 March 2022 to 29 March 2022. The third ODF threads

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on the topic, Assignment 02 recording link available, commenced from 29 March 2022 to 03 April 2022. The fourth ODF thread messages on the topic, Moodle and myUnisa is free, started from 11 March 2022 to 27 March 2022. The fifth ODF thread messages on the topic, Submit your assignment 1, occurred between 28 March 2022 and 29 March 2022.

Eng1515 In this case, the ODF threads on the first topic, Accessing and uploading assignments/assessments, began from the 24 March 2022 to 31 March 2022. The second ODF threads on the topic, I can’t find my 1st assignment, happened between 25 March 2022 and 28 March 2022. The third ODF threads on the topic, Submission, commenced from 24 March 2022 to 29 March 2022. The fourth ODF thread messages on the topic, Uploading and submitting an assignment, started from 01 April 2022 to 03 April 2022. The fifth ODF thread messages on the topic, WhatsApp group, took place between 29 March 2022 and 01 April 2022.

Eng2604 In this instance, the ODF threads on the first topic, Discussion forum, started from 23 March 2022 to 31 March 2022. The second ODF threads on the topic, Introduce yourself , occurred between 27 January 2022 and 03 April 2022. The third ODF threads on topic, New ENG2604 schedule, began from 23 March 2022 to 25 March 2022. The fourth ODF thread messages on the topic, Update: lecturer has rejoined the team, commenced from 14 February 2022 to 02 April 2022. The fifth ODF thread messages on the topic, Update regarding due dates for ENG2604, happened between 23 March 2022 to 02 April 2022.

Data Analysis Online student interactions from Moodle’s myUnisa’s ODF announcements forum were analysed through thematic analysis (Braun & Clarke, 2012; Guest et al., 2011; Terry et al., 2017). First, student interactions in the form of messages were extracted from Moodle’s ODFs based on the five topics related to each of the three modules. They were then exported to Microsoft Word and WordPad where they were converted into files of three data sets, each of which was related to each of the three modules. Thereafter, they were manually categorized into themes of converging and diverging coherence aligned to the five topics for each of the three modules mentioned above. Moreover, the data sets were quantitatively analysed by counting discussion forum message threads. Lastly, some parts of the three data sets were visualized using the software application, MS Power BI.

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Findings The findings presented in this section are three-pronged in that they relate to the eruptions of online student engagement patterns in the three modules, ENG1503, ENG1515, and ENG2604. Data set 1: ENG1503 student engagement patterns and asignifying ruptures As mentioned above, the study chose five ODF threads from ENG1503 announcements forum. Table 4.1 below, shows the main forum topics, forum posts which were regarded as having converging coherence with the main forum topics, and those that had diverging coherence (or asignifying ruptures) from the main forum topics (also see Fig. 4.1). In addition, the table portrays the frequencies of the discussion forum threads for converging and diverging coherence. Converging coherence Table 4.1 above illustrates five ODF topics posted on the myUnisa’s announcements (also see Fig. 4.1). The topic with the most ODF threads that were regarded as converging coherence was Announcement for question 2 of assignment 1, which had 66 threads. The topic, Please submit your Assignment 01, had 12 ODF threads. By contrast, Assignment 02 Livestream had 10 threads, and Assignment 02 recording link available had 7 threads. Lastly, Moodle and myUnisa is free had 4 threads. All the five topics that showed converging coherence had the total frequency of 99 threads combined (see Fig. 4.1). Below are two examples under each of the five topics mentioned above that were considered as having convergence coherence. Announcement for question 2 of assignment 1 SNX: I’m really lost ma’am! What should I do now? LBN: We have already submitted, what are we supposed to do now?

Table 4.1 ENG1503 topics and thread messages Main forums

Frequencies

Announcement Assignment Assignment for question 2 02 02 of assignment livestream recording 1 link available

Please Moodle and submit myUnisa is your free assignment 01

Forum 66 threads posts (converging coherence)

10 threads

7 threads

12 threads

4 threads

99 threads

Forum posts (diverging coherence)

5 threads

1 thread

6 threads

0 threads

36 threads

24 threads

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Fig. 4.1 ENG1503—Visualization of converging and diverging coherence message frequencies

Please submit your Assignment 01 MSM: Does that mean you have received my assignment? i used the upload on my Unisa. Thank you Unisa acknowledge your submission/project. NK: Just tried to submit assignment 01 s attempt, but it shows that I have 1 attempt submitted, the file shows under file submissions and it has todays date. Should I be worried? Assignment 02 Livestream SED: thank you I will watch the recording. WPM: Good evening. Thank you to the ENG1503-22-S1 team for the link. I have diarized this date, and I will definitely attend the livestream. Assignment 02 recording link available. NM: Thank you, Mam, for the recording. It is highly appreciated. BM: Thank You Mam, for this recording, we appreciate it especially us who were not able to take part of the livestream. Moodle and Myunisa is free JMNK: My Moodle and Unisa portals do not connect if I do not have data, kindly let me know where I can get this free Moodle andMy Unisa. NN: Thank you for raising that concern because it’s the same with me. No data no work.

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Diverging coherence/asignifying ruptures Table 4.1 above also shows five ODF topics with diverging coherence or with asignifying ruptures from the main forum topics (also see Fig. 4.1). For example, the topic, Announcement for question 2 of assignment 1, had 24 ODF threads, which in turn, had diverging coherence or asignifying ruptures. Please submit your Assignment 01 had 6 threads; Assignment 02 Livestream had 5 threads; and Assignment 02 recording link available had 1 thread. However, Moodle and myUnisa is free had 0 threads. The asignifying ruptures for the five topics had a frequency of 36 threads in total. Below are two further examples of ODF threads with asignifying ruptures. Announcement for question 2 of assignment 1 MN: KINDLY ASSIST ME WITH ASS1 Q4 PLEASE MY NO IS …?? AV: Why all my written assignments are exhibiting 0.00% while I did not plagiarized? I’m really confused now. Please submit your Assignment 01 NJS: Anyone with the prescribed book as a pdf for the module please kindly help. KM: The assignments are still not marked? Because since the 17th Mar my status has been “submitted for grading”, still haven’t got my marks. Assignment 02 Livestream MM:

Noted. Hope assignment 2 will be easy compared to assignment 1. It was very challenging. PWM: Noted so should we not write now and wait for a livestream? Assignment 02 recording link available PT: Thank you. Just to clarify, this assignment is due on the 22nd April and not 14th April? Moodle and myUnisa is free No interactions. Data set 2: ENG1515 student engagement patterns and asignifying ruptures Converging coherence Table 4.2 displays five topics and their ODF thread frequencies for both converging and asignifying ruptures pertaining to ENG1515 (also see Fig. 4.2). The topic, WhatsApp group, had 42 threads; I can’t find my 1st assignment had 14 threads; accessing and uploading assignments/assessments had 10 threads; and uploading and submitting an assignment had 4 threads. Lastly, the topic submission, had 2 threads. The overall ODF threads, which were considered to display converging coherence, had the total frequency of 72 threads for all the five topics. Below are two examples of converging coherence under each topic as highlighted above.

14 threads

10 threads

3 threads

Forum posts (converging coherence)

Forum posts (diverging coherence) 1 thread

I can’t find my 1st assignment

Accessing and uploading assignments/assessments

Main Forum

Table 4.2 ENG1515 topics and thread messages

10 threads

2 threads

Submission

7 threads

4 threads

Uploading and submitting an assignment

0 threads

42 threads

WhatsApp group

21 threads

72 threads

Frequencies

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Fig. 4.2 ENG1515—Visualisation of converging and diverging coherence message frequencies

WhatsApp group TSM: Can somebody kindly send the link to the ENG 1515 Whatsapp group or add me … PNB: I would also like to be added in the group guys please I’m struggling to study alone. I can’t find my 1st assignment LM: I don’t see my first assignment. JDT: I also can’t find mine. Where must one go look for it? Accessing and uploading assignments/assessments MRM: I am stressed, it’s been days now trying to get access to assignment 1 but I can’t find it. CTR: I cannot find or access any assignments, there is no attachment, it’s been days now and am starting to panic. Please help with assignment 1. Uploading and submitting an assignment LMM: Type your assignment into pdf reader and save it on your pdf then you’ll be able to submit it as a pdf document. MML: Then what if I wrote on a paper, what should i do? Submission QC:

I have tried to submit now, but now it says “please note that the file uploaded is under process. click on save changes once the file is uploaded to the server” Is this normal ??? feeling stressed, I need help please.?? MAM: Same here.

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Diverging coherence/asignifying rupture Table 4.2 illustrates five topics that were posted on the myUnisa’s Moodle platform (also see Fig. 4.2). The topic with the most frequency of ODF threads, and which consisted of asignifying ruptures was submission with 10 threads. It was closely followed by the topic, WhatsApp group, with 7 threads. The topic, accessing and uploading assignments/assessments had 3 threads, I can’t find assignment had 1 thread, whilst WhatsApp group, had no asignifying ruptures. Overall, the frequency of the asignifying rupture was 21. Data set 3: ENG2604 student engagement patterns and asignifying ruptures Converging coherence Table 4.3 above shows five topics that had both converging coherence in the module ENG2604 (also see Fig. 4.3). The topic with the highest converging coherence was introduce yourself with 113 ODF threads, update regarding due dates for ENG2604 had 3 threads, and discussion forum had 2 threads. By contrast, new ENG2604 schedule comprised 1 thread and update lecturer had joined the team had no thread. Below are examples under the five topics above, which showed converging coherence: Introduce yourself : MMK: Good evening, My name is MMK, I am 30 years old. I believe we can work together as a team to have a better understanding of this module. Hello good people. My Name is AB my email address is mylife.unisa.ac.za AB: hope working together will bring positive outcome. Update regarding due dates for ENG2604 NPK: Thank you. KEPC: noted, thank you. Table 4.3 ENG2604 topics and thread messages Main forum

Frequencies

Discussion forum

Introduce yourself!

New ENG2604 schedule

Update: lecturer has rejoined the team

Update regarding due dates for ENG2604

Forum posts (converging coherence)

1 thread

113 threads

1 thread

0 thread

3 threads

118 threads

Forum posts (diverging coherence)

1 thread

2 thread

0 threads

1 thread

0 threads

3 threads

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Fig. 4.3 ENG2604—Visualization of converging and diverging coherence message frequencies

Discussion forum No converging coherence New ENG2604 Schedule NS: Thank you. Diverging coherence or asignifying rupture Table 4.3 shows that there were five topics posted on the myUnisa’s Moodle platform (also see Fig. 4.3). The topic, introduce yourself, had two ODF threads, while update lecturer has rejoined the team discussion forum had one thread message. In contrast, update regarding due dates for ENG2604 and new ENG2604 schedule had no interaction threads in terms of the topics which were identified as asignifying ruptures.

Discussion As highlighted in the findings section above, the module that had the most converging coherence ODF threads was ENG2604, with 118 thread messages overall. For example, the topic with the most converging coherence from this module was introduce yourself , which had 113 thread messages. The module with the second most thread messages that displayed converging coherence was ENG1503, with 99 thread messages, in total. The most instances of converging coherence in this module were displayed by Announcement for question 2 of assignment 1. The module, ENG1515, had 72 instances of converging coherence thread messages. The topic, Whatsapp group, had the most converging coherence thread messages in this module. In Avcı and Ergün’s (2022) study, student engagement patterns were categorized as highlevel participation and low-level participation. In the current study, students whose thread messages were identified as having the most convergence coherence meant

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that their attendant thread messages did not divert from the focus of each of the five sets of ODF topics for each of the three modules mentioned above. In the same three modules, diverging coherence or asignifying ruptures were identified in varying degrees. For instance, the module with the most asignifying ruptures in terms of ODF threads was ENG1503, which attracted 36 threads. In this regard, the topic with the most asignifying ruptures was Announcement for question 2 of assignment, with 24 ODF. Interestingly, the same topic attracted the most instances of convergence and diverging coherence. Chaka’s (2020) study found that new emerging topics developed multiple thread topics, a process similar to diverging coherence or asignifying ruptures as argued by the current study. ENG1515 had 21 asignifying ruptures overall, with submission polling 10 diverging coherence ODF threads. The module with fewer diverging asignifying ruptures was ENG2604, which had 4 ODF threads in general. The topic introduce yourself had 2 asignifying ruptures in this module. Da Silva and Barbosa’s (2019) study established that Accounting Sciences students were more interactive in the first semester. In the current study, it was found that ENG1503 students had the most instances of diverging coherence as compared to ENG1515 and ENG2604, respectively. There were no ODF converging coherence thread messages identified in the module, ENG2604, under the topic, update: lecturer has rejoined the team. The next module with the fewest instances of converging coherence was ENG1515 as illustrated by the topic, submission, which had only 2 ODF thread messages. The module, ENG1503, had 4 converging coherence ODF thread messages across the five topics. In Sari’s (2020) study, it was found that there were passive learners based on student engagement. Compared to the current study, this would refer to students whose messages did not show converging and diverging coherence because of nonparticipation in all of the predetermined ODF topics. The findings of the current study are similar to those of Nkhobo’s (2022) study, which also discovered that student engagement patterns on online platforms tend to show converging and diverging themes.

Conclusion, Limitations, and Recommendations The main aim of this chapter was to study emerging asignifying ruptures pertaining to online student interactions that occurred in three modules, ENG1503, ENG1515, and ENG2604, on myUnisa’s ODFs. The study has discovered that ENG2604 had most instances of converging coherence as compared to the other two modules. However, there were two instances of diverging coherence, which displayed asignifying ruptures under the same topic, introduce yourself. The module with the second most instances of converging coherence was ENG1503, whose topic, announcement for question 2 of assignment 1, attracted the most messages among the five topics. Similarly, the highest frequencies of asignifying ruptures were identified under the same topic. ENG1515 had the fewest occurrences of converging coherence in comparison to the other two modules. By contrast, this module had more occurrences

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of asignifying ruptures compared to the other two modules. In this context, the findings of the present study demonstrate that online student engagement patterns cannot be confined to predetermined topics. They also emphazise that teaching and learning processes on online platforms such as the myUnisa’s ODFs can facilitate rhizomatic online student interactions. Such interactions tend to be unbounded, fluid, and unpredictable, a factor that necessitates flexible online learning and flexible online learning activities. The current study focused on three undergraduate modules in a department that has many modules and a huge number of students enrolled in some of its modules. Therefore, its findings are not generalizable, even though they have some applicability to other online modules. Similarly, its findings cannot be generalized to other students who were not part of it. Against this backdrop, it is recommended that student engagement patterns be studied across all the English Studies modules in order to discover instances of converging and diverging coherence/asignifying ruptures that can inform the design of online learning activities and online curricula, and that can inform teaching and learning practices in the department.

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Leavy, P. (2017). Research design: Quantitative, qualitative, mixed methods, arts-based, and community-based participatory research approaches. The Guilford Press. https://doi.org/10. 1111/fcsr.12276 Mackness, J., Bell, F., & Funes, M. (2016). The rhizome: A problematic metaphor for teaching and learning in a MOOC. Australasian Journal of Educational Technology, 32(1), 78–91. https://doi. org/10.14742/ajet.2486 Moradi, M., & Maleki, N. (2021). Villain-becoming and body without organs: A Deleuze-Guattarian rhizoanalysis of Paul Auster’s Invisible. Critical Literary Studies, 3(1), 55–67. https://doi.org/10. 34785/J014.2021.530 Moubayed, A., Injadat, M., Shami, A., & Lutfiyya, H. (2020). Student engagement level in an e-learning environment: Clustering using k-means. American Journal of Distance Education, 34(2), 137–156. https://doi.org/10.1080/08923647.2020.1696140 Muir, T., Milthorpe, N., Stone, C., Dyment, J., Freeman, E., & Hopwood, B. (2019). Chronicling engagement: Students’ experience of online learning over time. Distance Education, 40(2), 262– 277. https://doi.org/10.1080/01587919.2019.1600367 Nkhobo, T., & Chaka, C. (2021). Exploring instances of Deleuzian Rhizomatic patterns in students’ writing and in online student interactions. International Journal of Learning, Teaching and Educational Research, 20(10), 1–22. https://doi.org/10.26803/ijlter.20.10.1 Nkhobo, T. I. (2022). Exploring instances of Deleuzian rhizomatic patterns in student writing and online interactions at an open distance eLearning institution in South Africa. (Doctoral Dissertation). https://hdl.handle.net/10500/28746 Nkomo, L. M., & Nat, M. (2021). Student engagement patterns in a blended learning environment: An educational data mining approach. TechTrends, 65(5), 808–817. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11 528-021-00638-0 Onyema, E. M., Deborah, E. C., Alsayed, A. O., Noorulhasan, Q., & Sanober, S. (2019). Online discussion forum as a tool for interactive learning and communication. International Journal of Recent Technology and Engineering, 8(4), 4852–4859. https://doi.org/10.35940/ijrte.D8062. 118419 Salas-Pilco, S. Z., Yang, Y., & Zhang, Z. (2022). Student engagement in online learning in Latin American higher education during the COVID-19 pandemic: A systematic review. British Journal of Educational Technology, 53(3), 593–619. https://doi.org/10.1111/bjet.13190 Sari, F. M. (2020). Exploring English learners’ engagement and their roles in the online language course. Journal of English Language Teaching and Linguistics, 5(3), 349–361. http://www.jeltl. org/ Terry, G., Hayfield, N., Clarke, V., & Braun, V. (2017). Thematic analysis. In C. Willig & StaintonRogers (Eds.), The sage handbook of qualitative research in psychology (pp. 17–37). Sage. Tillmanns, T., & Filho, A. S. (2020). Reflecting on partnerships of sustainability learning: Enacting a Lewin–Deleuze–Guattari rhizome. Sustainability, 12(22), 1–17. https://doi.org/10.3390/su1222 9776 Westman, S., & Bergmark, U. (2019). Re-considering the ontoepistemology of student engagement in higher education. Educational Philosophy and Theory, 51(8), 792–802. https://doi.org/10. 1080/00131857.2018.1454309 Yates, A., Brindley-Richards, W., & Thistoll, T. (2020). Student engagement in distance-based vocational education. Journal of Open, Flexible and Distance Learning, 24(1), 60–74. https:// doi.org/10.3316/informit.195497153067486 Zayabalaradjane, Z. (2020). COVID-19: Strategies for online engagement of remote learners. Online Submission, 9(246), 1–11. https://doi.org/10.7490/f1000research.1117835.1

Chapter 5

Curriculum as Becoming: Becoming with a Forest Bo Sun Kim

Introduction Children never stop talking about what they are doing or trying to do: exploring milieus, by means of dynamic trajectories, and drawing up maps of them… But a milieu is made up of qualities, substances, powers, and events: the street, for example, with its materials (paving stones), its noises (the cries of merchants), its animals (harnessed horses) or its dramas (a horse slips, a horse falls down, a horse is beaten). The trajectory emerges not only with the subjectivity of those who travel through a milieu, but also with the subjectivity of the milieu itself, insofar as it is reflected in those who travel through it. (Deleuze, 1998, p. 61).

Early childhood education has been mesmerized by a representational logic that centres on the pre-planned curriculum and curriculum implementation. In this logic, learning has been framed “as tameable: predictable and possible to plan, supervise and evaluate against predetermined standards” (Olsson, 2009, p. 118). Moreover, there is the producer–consumer paradigm underlying the view of implementation. (Aoki, 2004) Notwithstanding, acknowledging the critical role of pedagogical relationships within early childhood education shifts the emphasis from acquiring standardized skills and knowledge to involving possibilities for empowerment that can attend to the transformation of the self and the curriculum reality. In this respect, this study contributes to conceptualizing curriculum as an inventive process of becoming, contesting a conventional view of curriculum-as-plan preoccupied with linearity and certainty of outcome. To displace such an outcome-based curriculum and to open up for alternatives, French philosophers Deleuze and Guattari’s (1987) concept of becoming was brought into practice, illuminating that curriculum is not predetermined. Instead, it takes shape as children and educators work with social and material encounters, connections, and relationality that bring movement and vitality to the curriculum. Taking into account curriculum as becoming directs us towards the B. S. Kim (B) Capilano University, British Columbia, Canada e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2023 M. S. Khine (ed.), Rhizome Metaphor, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-19-9056-4_5

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processes, trajectories, and the lines of flight. It also means working with uncertainty and the things that are constantly contingent, changing and in flux, seeing the world as in motion. Thus, the concept of becoming is brought to contest a curriculum as something fixed, permanent, and predictable. Instead, it orients us to a process, everchanging and becoming with unknowable potentiality. It is about “being open to and welcoming the emergence of the not-yet-thought, in oneself and others” (Moss, 2019, p. 124), seeking alternative pedagogies.

Philosophical Concepts of Deleuze and Guattari In considering curriculum as in motion, I have engaged with particular concepts, affect and becoming, of Deleuze and Guattari (1987). Deleuze and Guattari bring philosophical insight close to what we see happening in early childhood educational contexts (Olsson, 2009). For Deleuze, affect means a body’s capacity to act. Deleuze and Guattari took the concept ‘affect’ from Spinoza, defining affect as what a body can do. The term ‘affect’ is the change produced in a body and mind by interacting with another body. Deleuze and Guattari engaged the concept of affect to describe the processes of becoming and transformation through movement and encounters. In this regard, Deleuze and Guattari distinguished between affect and personal feeling (Massumi, 1987). Affect does not denote a personal feeling. Feelings are personal and biographical, and affects are associated with the pre-personal process of ‘becoming.’ Affect is the change that occurs when bodies encounter. In an encounter, the involved bodies are either expanded or restricted in their capacity to act. The affect of the power of a body is constantly increasing and decreasing depending on the extent to which the other bodies we encounter ‘agree’ or ‘disagree’ with us. Affect is not a ‘thing’ in Deleuze’s thinking; instead, affect is the term describing a particular kind of ‘encounter’ between bodies (Cull, 2013). For Deleuze (1988), “a body can be anything. It can be an animal, a body of sounds, an idea; it can be a linguistic corpus, a social body, a collectivity” (p. 127). Affects that produce joy and sadness will be different for everybody. In short, for Deleuze and Guattari (1987), affects are becomings and transformation. They are encounters that drive us to think. They explain that ‘becoming-animal,’ ‘becoming-woman,’ ‘becoming-minor’ necessarily involves affects. They argue that becoming is never imitating; it is a creation of the new rather than a repetition of the same. In this study, the concept of affect explains the process of curriculum-making as becoming and transformation that is not predetermined but takes shape through encounters, movement, connections, and intersections. The following episode presents the curriculum-making process around the forest inquiry, which unfolded through the rhizomatic connections and affects.

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Forest as Rhizome: A Machine Seeking Connections I conducted this study in a childcare centre on the campus of a university in British Columbia, Canada, located on the traditional, ancestral, and unceded territories of the Squamish, Musqueam, and Tslei-Waututh nations of the Coast Salish people. The forest inquiry began with educators noticing that the children had created unique connections and relationships to places in the nearby forest. I worked with 4-yearold children. In particular, Sarah, Ella, Tina, and Hailey were the main protagonists in my study. Over the four months of my research, the children, teachers, and I visited the forest numerous times. The following vignette brings attention to the valuing of multiple realities and multiple perspectives in early childhood curriculum-making, providing alternative possibilities for our everyday pedagogical practice, presenting the spontaneous and unpredictable learning that took place among the children while they were engaged in a forest project as subjects ‘exploring milieus,’ in the words of Deleuze (1998, p. 61). I draw on several concepts that figure in the work of Deleuze and Guattari, bringing theory and practice together in my analysis. Various narratives will be presented: children’s storytelling, graphic narratives (drawings and structures), and pedagogical interpretation of the curriculum events. These stories, which illuminate the children’s rhizomatic learning processes, demonstrate the importance of working with dynamic interrelationships and interconnections the children make with social and material worlds in curriculum-making processes. In particular, this study presents the critical role of educators in curriculum-making who are also part of the rhizomatic learning. Deleuze emphasizes that the adults in young children’s lives have unique roles as children move through milieus (he spoke of parents, but I would extend his insights to include teachers). ‘There is never a moment,’ he wrote, “when children are not already plunged into an actual milieu in which they are moving about and in which the parents as persons simply play the roles of openers or closers of doors, guardians of thresholds, connectors or disconnectors of zones” (Deleuze, 1998, p. 61). In this study, the educator and I become those who open doors and connect zones, seeing the forest as a machine seeking connections that creates new possibilities and potentiality for what the forest becomes. The curriculum inquiry around the forest can be seen to move through the philosophical notion of the ‘rhizome,’ where there is no predefined curricular progression. Interpreting the children’s experience through the concept of ‘rhizome’ offers the possibility for understanding children’s perspectives and unfolds the curriculum as open, complex, and transformative. We approach forest inquiry as entirely contingent on its ontology as a machine seeking connections to making a rhizome rather than discovering rigid identities already given to the forest, expecting to see the forest in terms of difference and multiplicities. According to Deleuze and Guattari (1987), one will always run into limitations when trying to impose rigid identities onto a rhizome. Thus, our world becomes a blocked rhizome, and creating something new is not possible. To embrace different ways of knowing and the multiplicity of perspectives that all participants can bring, we asked ourselves: What possibilities exist if a curriculum

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is unfolded through connections, relationality, intersections, and encounters with each other and with material environments rather than through the standardized pre-planned activities that decide what children should learn or should be doing; what takes place between the children, educators, and the forest when learning is approached through rhizomatic connections.

Forest Walk: Making Connection Within the Forest It was a snowy day in January, the opening day for my research with the children and the teacher. The children and the teacher warmly greeted me. Some of the children recognized me and instantly invited me into their play. The classroom was full of warm energy from the children’s active play. The teacher and I had a brief conversation about a plan for the day, beginning with a walk into the forest. These children had made many trips to the forest since September. Yet, they had not been back to the forest since the Christmas holiday, so they were excited to go. I tried to imagine the winter forest and wondered how the children might respond. They rushed to the cubby area, quickly dressing in their winter gear. Each child joined a partner and held hands. Then, they beckoned me to follow them as we left the centre. When we had walked for about 10 min, we arrived at the entrance to the forest and encountered a big campus map. The children excitedly explained to me where we were, pointing out the location of their centre relative to the forest. The teacher shared with me that conversing about some places and names of buildings on the map had become an essential ritual of any trip to the forest (Fig. 5.1). It was beautiful scenery due to the snow glittering in the trees. The children separated from their partners immediately. They could easily walk through the

Fig. 5.1 The children are excitedly exploring the campus map on the way to the forest

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trees, bending around branches and narrow spaces. The children seemed to have no problem, but the teacher and I had difficulty following; navigating those tiny spaces between the hanging branches prevented us from catching up with the children. The children excitedly shouted at us, and the teacher advised the children to stay in sight. They quickly agreed among themselves to visit ‘the rainbow tree’ first. It seemed to me they knew this forest very well, and everyone seemed to have their own path to the rainbow tree. The children’s excitement posed a question: Why is this particular tree so special to them? In Deleuze and Guattari’s (1987) language, I felt my desire for the rainbow tree emerge. Their desire became my own. I was walking fast now, longing to see the tree, wondering why I had never desired a tree before. It was a pleasure to be guided by the children and to be a stranger in this place. Then, I heard one of the children shouting, “Rainbow tree! This is our rainbow tree!” I came to a complete stop in front of the tree. I was amazed by how beautifully the branches made an arch that curved like a rainbow, as if someone intentionally made it like this. With all the leaves gone and with the children’s excitement, the structure of the rainbow tree was vividly revealed (Fig. 5.2). After some time with the rainbow tree, the children exclaimed that they wanted to show me a nearby climbing tree. Children seemed to know their own way of getting to it. I followed one of the children. Then I saw the tree and understood why the children called it a climbing tree. All the children climbed up the tree so easily. The shape of the tree seemed to invite the children to climb because some of its thick branches grew parallel to the ground. Once in the tree, all the children quickly transformed themselves into monkeys. The forest was also transformed; it became a place for the monkeys to play, sing, dance, and eat. The climbing tree held power to change the children and their surroundings. There was another important tree nearby, the tree tent, a place for shelter and fanciful play.

Fig. 5.2 The rainbow tree I encountered in the forest

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Fig. 5.3 The children transformed into monkeys played on the climbing tree and made some food in the tree tent

The teacher explained that these three sites—the rainbow tree, climbing tree, and tree tent—were where the children had created special relationships within the forest; visiting these places had become a ritual each time they came here. After visiting these places, the children freely wandered and explored other areas in the forest. The children could travel by themselves as long as they could see the teacher (Fig. 5.3). This forest walk provoked me to think deeply: What does it mean for the children and educators to connect to and engage within the forest? What meanings and senses do they make within the forest? What might be possible if we do not see the forest with a static identity but determined by the connections that make it up in a given moment? What possibilities and potentialities of the forest might be possible if we see the forest as a living rhizome?

Becoming Children On the way back to the centre, the children continuously interacted with each other and the surroundings. The children often made connections to things on the ground and especially showed great interest in branches and sticks. The teacher mentioned that the sticks and branches were not visible when the forest was full of leaves. Some children started to collect sticks from the ground. In particular, Hailey seemed to be determined to collect as many sticks as possible. She had gathered a big pile of sticks, remarking that “sticks are beautiful and these small sticks are so soft. Sticks are my favourite.”

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Hailey’s comments and her perspectives on the sticks disrupted my perceptions and positionality on the sticks. I have never thought sticks could be beautiful and appealing in the early childhood context. Instead, I have considered sticks spiky and potentially dangerous for young children’s play. Encountering and responding to the different worldviews made me take a step back and invited me to see the world in terms of difference (Deleuze & Guattari, 1987), acknowledging that I am just one perspective of making sense of the world. Witnessing the children interact with the sticks changed my preconceptions of what sticks can do and be, recognizing the importance of embracing different perspectives, ideas, and ways of engaging with the world to bring other possibilities and potentialities. The children picked up and collected sticks with excitement and joy, treating them as precious gifts from the forest. It seemed that the children could do anything with the sticks. But, at the same time, the sticks also gave the children specific power, a special power to transform things around them. I started to see the agency of the sticks and wondered about other potentiality of the sticks: what can they be? What can they do? I became a child. The concept of becoming, as Deleuze and Guattari (1987) understand it, seeing the forest as becoming is to embrace the interconnections and interrelationships. In A Thousand Plateaus, Deleuze and Guattari (1987) wrote rather poetically, “on the near side, we encounter becomings-woman, becomings-child… On the far side, we find becomings-elementary, -cellular, -molecular, and even becomings-imperceptible” (p. 248). As I interpret it, becoming presents ideas about what we are and what we can be and potentialities beyond the categories that ordinarily contain us. Becoming gestures goes beyond the boundaries separating human beings from animals, a man from woman, child from adult, micro from macro, and even the understandable from the incomprehensible. Sotirin (2005) clarified Deleuze and Guattari’s concept of becoming: “Becoming moves beyond our need to know (the true, what is real, what makes us human); beyond our determination to control (life, nature, and the universe)… For Deleuze, “becomings” are about passages, propagations and expansions” (p. 99). The focus of becoming is about changes in ourselves. Becoming is always about the “in the middle and in-between” (Deleuze & Guattari, 1987, p. 323). Semetsky (2008) and Lenz Taguchi (2010) also worked with Deleuze’s and Guattari’s concept of becoming. These authors saw becoming as a way to think about bringing the other into ourselves or becoming transformed through encounters. Becoming—a child in my study means that I am still an adult but have changed my viewpoint because of being with a child. Thus, I became a child by encountering and being affected by the children who engaged with sticks. I had never envisaged that sticks could be meaningful in early childhood education or have much potential to enrich children’s learning. So I started to speculate about sticks and their possibilities. I was cognizant of my changed perception of sticks and started to see them differently. I saw myself changing as an affect of the encounters with the children, the sticks, the rainbow tree, the climbing tree, and the tree tent in the forest. Sticks became an inspiration to me, a catalyst for seeing potential and possibilities in other materials. As a result, I became more appreciative of the value of the materials in the

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Fig. 5.4 When James saw a frosty table, he drew on the table with the stick he had been using as a cane. The stick became a drawing tool

early childhood pedagogical spaces, searching for different perspectives. According to Deleuze (1994), embracing the differences in the world is dwelling in constant motion without knowing how things will bring to a close. Instead of regarding a stick with a static identity of what it is, one should see a stick as a living organism in motion that becomes actualized through its connections and relationality. One cannot know ahead of time where the motion will take you (Deleuze, 1994). The following photograph presents how quickly a stick was transformed from a cane to a drawing tool when a child, a stick, and a frosty picnic table encountered each other (Fig. 5.4). The children held at least one stick in their hands in the forest. They used them to walk and draw on the frosty snow on the picnic table. Having a stick in the forest seemed to give great power to them. I also carried along with a slinky stick, to which I was attracted. It changed my attitude in the forest. I didn’t feel like a stranger in the forest anymore. I became a part of this place just by holding a stick. Once I had a stick in my hand, the stick was not separate from me but became an extension of me. My own sense of myself was transformed by having the stick. I became something more than my ordinary self. The children’s perspectives of and engagement with sticks changed my way of looking at the sticks. I became a child. This encounter made me realize how much I have limited my experience because I preconceived the world. According to Sotirin (2005), the immanence of becoming is the most critical aspect of our identities. We are transformed when we think of ourselves as becomings, multiplicities, lines, and intensities rather than essential forms, predetermined subjects, functions, or transcendental values. The forest walk with the children provoked me to see things outside of the usual framework I confine myself to. I became cognizant of how our perceptions (e.g. considering a stick as something dangerous to play with) might hinder the children from discovering values and possibilities in materials and worlds. Thus, I needed to put my assumptions in motion, embrace difference, make connections, and be willing to transform my

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ordinary perceptions and look forward to seeing the changes in myself. We have to see ourselves in a constant and mutual state of responsibility for what happens in the multiple intra-actions, experiment with the opportunities it offers, and affect and be affected by everything else in the learning process (Lenz Taguchi, 2010).

Becoming Mystery Girls The children collected various leaves, sticks, stones, and dried flowers in the forest and brought them to the centre. The teacher displayed them so that the children freely touched them and worked with them throughout the day. For example, in the area where leaves were aesthetically presented in a glass jar on a mirror with a book featuring Emily Carr’s paintings of northwest coastal forests, Sarah, Tina, and Ella were painting a forest (Fig. 5.5). As the children painted a forest, they shared stories about their own experiences within the forest. I joined the table to listen to them, curious about their ideas, thoughts, stories and experiences about our forest walk. As I listened to the dialogue, I noticed that the children had constantly made and re-made stories by connecting and intersecting with each other’s ideas. First, the children talked about trees, then they moved on to animals, such as birds, bears, and bugs that live in the trees, and they remarked on what the weather in the forest would be that day. Then, I heard a story about mystery girls. Sarah initiated a topic which instantly transformed the forest into a place where the mystery girls live. Her story about the mystery girls drew my attention and other children’s. Ella and Tina promptly joined the conversation about mystery girls. They were quickly connected to and immersed in the story, creating and adding more details about the mystery girls. Their story quickly turned

Fig. 5.5 The three girls paint a forest after looking at the painting book together

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into playing mystery girls. Finally, the three girls wrapped up their paintings and moved on to play mystery girls. Things started to get interesting when the children became mystery girls, and the classroom transformed into a forest. It was palpable that the forest had become a familiar and intimate place to the children. In Deleuze and Guattari’s term, a forest is a machine that seeks connections with other machines to bring about a particular actuality and does not have a fixed direction that can change through its connection with other machines.

Who Are the Mystery Girls? The teacher and I became very curious about who the mystery girls were. So we called a meeting with the children to ask some questions about the mystery girls. We started with a simple question: Who are the mystery girls? The children laughed when the teacher asked, but they seemed agitated to share their stories (Fig. 5.6). Sarah went first: It is the kind of girl that is invisible and can sneak into the house, and when people are all out, she makes snacks in the house and cleans all the stuff. Hailey: It is a girl who cleans all the dirty stuff. Tina: The girl is invisible and cleans the dirt on the floor. She’s got cleaning sticks. They are branches, 10-inch branches. Mini: They can sneak into the forest, too. Sarah: These girls want no one to see them because they just want to be invisible. But their cousins can see them. Only their cousins can see them. Mini: Then, they can sneak into the forest and go up to the trees. Sarah: They live in the forest. Teacher: How do you know they live in the forest if invisible? Sarah: Because we are cousins of the invisible girls. So we can see them. They have invisible eyes. So they can see each other, too. Teacher: Then, Bosun and I can’t see the mystery girls? Sarah: No. Because you are not mystery girls, and you are not cousins of mystery girls. Can we go to the forest now? We want to play with the mystery girls.

This conversation made the children and educators want to take a trip to the forest again the next day. When we arrived, the children first rushed to the climbing tree and the rainbow tree (Fig. 5.7). They seemed to never tyre of these trees. After playing for some time, Sarah volunteered to guide us to where the mystery girls lived. We all followed her. After a brief walk, Sarah exclaimed, “this is where the mystery girls are living.”

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Fig. 5.6 The children explained about mystery girls as they drew them. They also drew the house of mystery girls in the forest that they made out of wood

Fig. 5.7 Place where the mystery girls live in the forest. The girls are checking the house of the mystery girls

This place was a small clearing surrounded by burnt trees, fallen logs, and many stumps. There was a small hill that the girls could climb on in the middle, and on one of its sloped sides was a hole. Sarah said the hole was the door leading into the mystery girls’ house. As soon as the children arrived at, what Sarah called, the house entrance of the mystery girls, they transformed themselves into mystery girls. They began by saying they had just come back from cleaning up the school and wanted to take some rest at home. And then Sarah said,

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Fig. 5.8 A treehouse for mystery girls, designed by Sarah, Tina, and Tera

I wish we had a treehouse at the school too. Then, we can rest there when we are tired. Tina: We need a hiding place at the school if people see us. We don’t want people to find us.

The children appeared so excited about having a treehouse inside the school and exclaimed that they would make a treehouse as soon as they returned to the centre. On the way back from the forest, they talked about the shapes and colours of the treehouse they wanted to build. We suggested the girls design the treehouse to show each other their ideas. The children were aroused about making a house for the mystery girls back in the classroom and wanted to design the treehouse. The girls sat around a table, bringing drawing materials needed for the design. As they drew, they shared their ideas about an ideal treehouse (Fig. 5.8). They called it their ‘wish treehouse.’ “We want to make a colourful treehouse with many decorations on its walls.” Once the children finished designing, Sarah and Tina ran into a small room interior to the classroom. The small room was crowded with various sizes and types of paper, coloured pencils, markers, and natural materials, such as sticks, leaves, dried fruit peels, and pinecones collected in the forest. Sarah and Tina wanted to use some sticks and a big wooden frame they found in the room for the treehouse. They seemed to be thrilled by the materials they found. However, the room was too obviously tiny for the treehouse they had designed. The children looked genuinely perplexed by this situation. I wondered how they would work with this problem and asked if they needed a bigger space. Sarah and Tina looked around the room repeatedly and said. “The room is too small for our plan” This physical limitation became a challenge, and the children invested their time figuring this out. I wondered why they could not simply change the location, which I thought to be an easy solution. Finally, after the discussion, the children arrived at a decision. They would change their design rather

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than change the location. Sarah explained, “Remember? the mystery girls did not want to have a big house because they don’t want people to notice them.” Instead of making a treehouse, she proposed making a tree tent. The idea of a tree tent could not emerge from a rigid and fixed purpose in mind. It was created through rhizomatic thought, connecting the children, the mystery girls, sticks, a big wooden frame, and a small room. An individual child is a machine, and a group of the children would be a machine, seeking connections with other machines, trying to bring about an actuality. An essential aspect of the machine to Deleuze and Guattari (1987) is that it does not have an inflexible purpose and can change its goals or desires. In this study, curriculum-making can be understood as a machine that always seeks more connections and flexible movement. A machine is identified by what it produces. It produces new connections, interferences, and meanings through “the processes of arranging, organizing, and fitting together” (Livesey, 2005, p. 77), a complex arrangement of objects, bodies, expressions, qualities, and territories that come together for changing periods to create new ways of functioning (Livesey, 2005). For example, a stick does not have a fixed identity in this forest inquiry. A machine of a stick connects with a machine of the children, a machine of the mystery girls, and a machine of the room. The children could bring different actuality of sticks. This point is there is no fixed purpose or identity of the sticks, and it is only through complex connections with other machines around it that the purpose of the sticks becomes actualized. The collections of machines of the children, a small room, mystery girls, and sticks made determined what could be actualized. The machine can constantly be affected and driven by new connections and the movement of other machines. Once the children decided on making a tree tent for the mystery girls, they started to negotiate its details. They primarily paid attention to the size and shape of the tent. The tent has to be small so that no one would notice it but the mystery girls. “How about we make just a door of the tent”, Tina exclaimed, concerning that even the tree tent might be too noticeable. Finally, the other children concurred with the idea that having just a door, a secret entrance to the tent, would lead the mystery girls inside the tree tent without getting noticed. The children seemed to take the idea of being invisible, unnoticeable, and secret seriously. However, Sarah looked worried and said, “How do the mystery girls know it would lead to the tent?” The children exclaimed that the mystery girls needed clues to find the secrete door: Sarah: I am attaching these leaves because these are the first clue. Tina: These paper hearts are the second clue. I will put some hearts on the door. Tera: These sticks are the third clue. Leaves, hearts, and sticks are clues for the door.

The children used a wooden frame for the door of the tent. Then, they added some sticks to the frame, decorating the door with paper hearts and small leaves. The children hoped that these clues would help the mystery girls find the door. The children’s initial plan for making a treehouse went through transformation related to the challenges they encountered and their connections with others and their surroundings. Deleuze states that machines are always connected to other machines. So machines

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Fig. 5.9 A secret door of a tent leads to the inside of the tent decorated with clues for mystery girls

are always generative by connecting with other machines. In this study, in Deleuze and Guattari’s words, the machine of the children connected with the machine of the mystery girls, treehouse, and a small room. A machine of a tree tent connected with a machine of materials, leaves, paper hearts, and sticks. The leaves, papers hearts, and sticks sitting in a room became crucial clues to the secret door for the mystery girls when they connected to a machine of the children. The production of thoughts, discoveries, and inventive ideas was not an individual enterprise but a social and material force, driving force of creation (Fig. 5.9).

Curriculum as Concept Creation According to Colebrook (2002), “if we limit thought to simple acts of representation and cognition, for example, ‘this is a chair,’ ‘this is a table,’ then we impose all sorts of dogmas and rules upon thinking” (p. 14). There are different styles of thinking and learning that go beyond the representation of the world. Deleuze and Guattari (1994) talked about the universal power of philosophy. They were not speaking of the power of generalization or some common feature that all beings share. Thinking universally demands that we go beyond all the beings that we ordinarily perceive and instead think about how any being might be possible. Deleuze and Guattari (1994) stated that “you will know nothing through concepts unless you have first created them… To create concepts is, at the very least, to make something” (p. 7). In this context, the children’s learning was not focused on common sense and ordinary representation of the forest but on creating and connecting thoughts through their own kind of logic. It was a creative process rather than one that features the representation and transmission of pre-existing knowledge. Children’s experiences and deliberations shaped the learning

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trajectory, creating many concepts and stories that moved beyond what is already known and what we already know. The story of mystery girls presents the curriculum evolved through children’s engagement in dialogue and experimentation with others and responding to their material environment. Without having any fixed identity of the inquiry topic, a forest, the curriculum was made through ongoing social and material encounters. The concept of mystery girls reflects Deleuze’s concept of philosophy as the creation of new concepts, a constant process of creation and becoming. The forest in this study could no longer be represented as a single static entity. Instead, it is always under construction, a process of becoming with multiple connections and interactions. A forest was always relational, plural, and emergent in connections with multiplicity, being unfolded with the interconnections and the process of mutual engagement between the children, educators, and the forest.

Forest as Assemblage of New Ideas, Concepts, and Stories Deleuze (1994) argues that everything around us affects everything else, which makes everything in the process of becoming. Deleuze’s approach to the term affect differs from psychology, where affect is denoted as “emotional corporeal and psychological reactions, such as delusion, euphoria, sadness, grief, and trauma” (Colman, 2005, p.11). Deleuze thought of affect as a philosophical concept that indicates the result of the interaction of bodies. Affect means a body’s capacity to act. Deleuze and Guattari took the concept ‘affect’ from Spinoza, drawing from Spinoza in defining affect as what a body can do. For Spinoza, affects are states of mind and body related to feelings and emotions. The term ‘affect’ is the change or variation produced in a body and mind by an interaction with another body. Deleuze and Guattari engaged Spinoza’s philosophical conceptions of affect to describe the processes of becoming, transformation through movement and over a period. However, according to Massumi (1987), Deleuze and Guattari distinguished between affect and personal feeling. Affect does not denote a personal feeling. Feelings are subjective and biographical, and affects are associated with the pre-personal process of ‘becoming.’ Affect is the change that occurs when bodies encounter. In an assemblage, the involved bodies are either expanded or restricted in their capacity to act. “When something in an assemblage changes, the bodies involved are affected or affected” (Olsson, 2009, pp. 147–148). Affect is the term describing a particular kind of ‘encounter’ between bodies (Cull, 2013). For Deleuze (1988), “a body can be anything. It can be an animal, a body of sounds, an idea; it can be a linguistic corpus, a social body, a collectivity” (p. 127). Spinoza’s concept of the body makes us focus on the specific potentialities in every situation. Affects that produce joy and sadness will be different for everybody. Deleuze (as cited in Cull, 2013) noted, “a fly will perceive the sun in another fashion” (p.129). In short, for Deleuze and Guattari (1987), affects are becomings and transformation. They are encounters that ‘force us to think.’ They explain that, ‘becoming-animal,’ ‘becoming-woman,’ ‘becoming-minor’ necessarily

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involves affects. Becoming does not include a process of imitation, identification, or reproduction of animals or women. They argue that becoming is never imitating; it is a creation of the new rather than a repetition of the same. I use the concept of affect in my study to account for how children’s singular ideas and experiences of the forest affect each other and their learning trajectories. The concept of affect as becoming and transformation explains children’s learning that is not predetermined but takes shape as children encounter multiple ideas, materials, and surroundings. At the conclusion of the forest inquiry, we asked the children to draw a map of the forest to visualize the children’s conceptions and their experiences of the forest. The event of map-drawing did not seek to represent what was already known. Instead, it became ongoing production of new ideas, concepts, and stories (Fig. 5.10). A body of the idea of drawing a map of the forest affected our discursive understandings of what a map is and can do, opening up new possibilities of a map and the world: Sarah: There is an end of the world in the forest. ‘End of the world’ is when you see the crack right at the end of the side of the world and you see the ocean. Teacher: So, end of the world is where the ocean is? If we go down to the ocean, do you think that will be end of the ocean? Hailey: I think she means that there is space at the end of the world. But, there is a waterfall at my end of the world, and we can go big slide down to the waterfall. So, the end of the waterfall would be the end of the world. Sarah: No, I need to tell you something; the bottom of the waterfall is not the end of the world. I mean the top of the waterfall is the end of the world. Then you go down the waterslide to get to the sea end of the world. Tina: There are lots of planets there.

The idea of ‘end of the world’ emerged through the map-drawing event—the other children were affected by Sarah’s idea and became part of the creation of inventive

Fig. 5.10 The children’s collaborative map-drawing—The end of the world

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ideas through map-drawing. The map-drawing process made visible the children’s rhizomatic ways of thinking and relating, illustrating that thought creates itself as it goes on (Deleuze & Guattari, 1987), leading to the birth of a new critical and creative language. The map does not seek to represent the children’s knowledge faithfully. Instead, it makes the children’s connections visible through the map-drawing process. A new concept, ‘End of the world,’ was actualized through the map-drawing process. The discussion around the location of the end of the world became essential. And it led to making a 3D map of the forest to deepen and articulate their theories. Before the children made a map, they had to decide who would make what part of the map, which became challenging but a remarkable event for the children. First, Tina volunteered to create a school with clay and placed it on the map. Then, Hailey made the pathway with clay starting from the school to the forest (Fig. 5.11). Hailey’s pathway helped the other children to locate their parts of the forest: Ella: These are prickly bushes and a rainbow tree. I want to make lots of bushes so that the forest looks foresty. Sarah: At the end of the world, there are lots of X, and this one is the X on the tree showing end of the world starts here. So we know this is the end of the world. I am making a prickly bush to protect the X. If the bush pricks you, you get deadish magic. And only kid hunters can touch it, nobody else. Ella: At the end of the world, let’s have some soup. I am making flower soup. Tina: I am making lots of planets. At the end of the world, there are lots of planets and flowers.

During the process of making the map of the forest, the children came up with inventive stories. The children made things based on their emerging ideas and stories and added them to the map. The map became a graphic representation of their

Fig. 5.11 The children’s collaborative 3D map with clay

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emerging ideas and stories. It was fascinating to see how ideas emerged and travelled between the children, a living example of the value of working with a rhizomatic thinking process. Working with a small group of children made it possible for ideas to connect, intersect, and evolve as they attended to what others were saying and doing. The materials also inspired and affected the children. The materials, maps, ideas, and children were in a complex entangled movement, creating multiple possibilities for what a forest can be and what a map can be. The concepts and stories are emergent assemblages with mutual engagement with dialogue and the act of map-making involving all bodies. Lenz Taguchi (2010) states: Learning does not simply take place inside the child but is the phenomena that are produced in the intra-activity taking place in between the child, its body, its discursive inscriptions, the discursive conditions in the space of learning, the materials available, the time-space relations in a specific room of situated organisms, where people are only one such material organism among others. (p. 36)

She argued, “all these organisms and matter in the event of learning must be understood as being performative agents. They are intra-acting with each other differently, with different intensities and force, depending on the different potentialities of each organism” (Lenz Taguchi, 2010, p. 36). Making a three-dimensional map using various materials was a dynamic process of intra-activity. It illustrates an ongoing flow of agency focused on the “in-between of intra-activity, as well as on the interdependent and intertwined nature of the relationship between discourses, things, matter and organism” (Lenz Taguchi, 2010, p. 29). The children’s map contained not only locations and topographic features but also their experiences and imagination. The conventional definition and pre-existing categories of a map did not bind the children’s idea about a map (Fig. 5.12). The multiplicity and new possibility of the map emerged when we asked the children about what a map is and can do: Sarah: It shows where to go. Maybe, we can go to the forest today. Before we go, we can make a humongous map, and then you can hold the map, and it tells us where to go, and we can go to the end of the world where we have never been before. I have been to the end of the world, and nobody else does. So I will lead you guys there. To go to the end of the world, we need a map. Teacher: In the map, what do you want to include? Sarah: We need ice in case we get hurt. We need binoculars to see things far away. Hailey: We can bring some supplies that we can dig and rake. We need a shovel. Ella: We need sunglasses if it’s sunny.

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We need hats and hoods if it’s raining and snowing. Hailey: We need trees. Sarah: We need bears. We need lots of people to be all kinds of animal catchers. And I will be one of the creatures that Ella and Hailey will catch. So you guys have to put me in the animal cage. Teacher: So, does a map tell you who you can be? Sarah: Yes, I am going to be the puppy-lion. Ella: Then, I am the puppy hunter. Hailey: I will be the guard. Sarah: Let’s go and make a gigantic map.

For the children, a map of the forest shows us things in the forest, like a rainbow tree, climbing tree, workshop, treehouse, and the tree where mystery girls play. A map also tells you what to bring to the forest and who you can be in the forest. Listening to children was an ongoing process of being affected, being open to difference and the new possibilities of seeing the world. The map became a place for emergent ideas, encountering different thoughts, engaging in dialogue, and composing ourselves in collective encounters. We became a forest that was constantly evolving.

Fig. 5.12 The children discuss what to include on the map

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Curriculum Making as Becoming with Worlds The forest inquiry presents children’s rhizomatic learning processes, transforming with unexpected connections and relations made with worlds (social and material). Our relation to the forest was constant engagement with thoughts, stories, and materials created through rhizomatic connections, treating an inquiry topic as living, ongoing, unfinished conversations. Throughout the inquiry process, the children’s multiple, complex, and inventive ideas and perspectives brought new possibilities and potentiality for a curriculum inquiry around the forest, generating creative concepts, stories, and new experiences. I argue that through encounters, connections, and engagement with each other and with the material environment, the curriculum was activated, conjured and materialized. Moreover, encountering otherness, unfamiliarity, and challenges provoked us to think otherwise about what might be possible. This study presents how different ways of understanding pedagogical approach to learning produce different ways of understanding and engaging within the world with different ethical implications. The forest became a collective assemblage constituted through the entangled webs of connections and relationality; it became a living place continually transforming itself through multiple encounters and affects. For Deleuze and Guattari (1987), to connect is to work with potentialities with unpredictable becomings, constantly in flux, bringing something new and remarkable. Following these lines of thought, this study discloses how vital to move away from the idea of learning as transmission, reproduction, and outcome-based if we wish to give value to difference, multiplicity, invention to bring something new to our education. It implies contesting the conventional ideas that children and learning are measurable, predictable and controllable according to a predetermined standard. To think otherwise in our pedagogical context, we regarded learning as unknown becoming, opening alternative possibilities in the early childhood curriculum. Thus, the process of curriculum-making was an inventive way of thinking, acting and knowing, “knowing as complexities of affect and material-discursive embodied lived experiences” (Lenz Taguchi, 2010, p. 162). Therefore, working with the concepts of the rhizome, affect, and becoming in this study was invaluable as it presented an alternative to models with predetermined outcomes and homogeneous assessment and conventional cause-and-effect relationships in the contemporary early childhood curriculum. Each individual’s understanding and perspectives were treated as a different approach to the inquiry, offering other ways to relate to a milieu. Thus, the purpose of learning was not to discover the essence of what a forest is. Instead, we focused on possibilities and potentialities derived from the lived experience and inventive ideas that emerged through encounters and connections. New thoughts were continuously created through encounters and relations (Deleuze & Guattari, 1987). The different perspectives, ideas, and experiences that each individual brought forward became openings, enrichments, and potentiality of the curriculum inquiry, a living inquiry that a multiplicity of interconnected thoughts goes off in all directions. In this regard, learning in this study was never approached as discovering the transcendent objective truths about the inquiry

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topic. Instead, learning was conceptualized as knowledge and concept creation and composition. Entering into a composition with the children we encounter was to compose ourselves anew (Davies, 2014). It engrosses children and educators in processes of mutual engagement and transformation. Encounters and being affected by others are indispensable to composing the collective assemblage. This means we are responsible for what happens and emerges in the learning event (Lenz Taguchi, 2010). Our capacity to affect each other and become with others increases our capacity to act (Deleuze & Guattari, 1987), opening other possibilities for which we are responsible. The openness and responsiveness to entering into composition with multiple others and being in relation with the world in an ongoing way make the curriculum rich and generative. At the same time, this makes us aware of our responsibility of what we bring, create, and can do to affect something or someone with unknown potentialities (Lenz Taguchi, 2010) of what children become, what the world becomes, and what we become together.

References Aoki, T. T. (2004). Toward curriculum inquiry in a new key. In W. F. Pinar & R. L. Irwin (Eds.), Curriculum in a new key: The collected works of Ted T. Aoki (pp. 89–110). Routledge. Colebrook, C. (2002). Giles Deleuze. Routledge. Colman, F. (2005). Cinema: Movement-image-recognition-time. In J. C. Stivale (Ed.), Gilles Deleuze: Key concepts (pp. 141–156). Acumen. Cull, L. (2013). Theatres of immanence: Deleuze and the ethics of performance. Palgrave Macmillan. Davies, B. (2014). Listening to children: Being and becoming. Routledge. Deleuze, G. (1988). Spinoza: Practical philosophy (R. Hurley, Trans.). City Light Books. Deleuze, G. (1994). Difference and repetition (P. Patton, Trans.). Columbia University Press. Deleuze, G. (1998). Essays critical and clinical (D. W. Smith & M. A. Greco, Trans.). University of Minnesota Press. Deleuze, G., & Guattari, F. (1987). A thousand plateaus: Capitalism and schizophrenia (B. Massumi, Trans.). University of Minnesota Press. Lenz Taguchi, H. (2010). Going beyond the theory/practice divide in early childhood education: Introducing an intra-activity pedagogy. Routledge. Livesey, G. (2005). Assemblage. In A. Parr (Ed.), The Deleuze dictionary (pp. 18–19). Columbia University Press. Massumi, B. (1987). Translator’s forward: Pleasures of philosopy. In G. Deleuze & F. Guattari (Eds.), A thousand plateaus. University of Minnesota Press. Moss, P. (2019). Alternative narratives in early childhood education: An introduction for students and practitioners. Routledge. Olsson, L. M. (2009). Movement and experimentation in Young children’s learning: Deleuze and Guattari in early childhood education. Routledge. Semetsky, I. (2008). Nomadic education: Variations on theme by Deleuze and Guattari. Sense Publishers. Sotirin, P. (2005). Becoming-woman. In C. J. Stivale (Ed.), Gilles Deleuze: Key concepts (pp. 98– 109). Acumen Publishing.

Chapter 6

Becoming Learners in Laboratories of Learning: A Rhizomatic Assemblage of Nomadic Pedagogies Noemi Sadowska and Mark Ingham

Introduction At our creative arts and design university, we have noticed that in the day-to-day rush of teaching delivery, we often make assumptions about how we/our students learn and therefore how we teach. The impact of the pandemic has brought this realization into sharp focus and with urgency. To tackle this, questions on how do we know when we learn and how do we know we have become part of a community of learning practice, we have designed a research project that explores what would be needed for staff and students to test ideas about learning in safe, brave and daring spaces (Arao & Clemens, 2013; Vogel, 2020). We are calling these spaces ‘Laboratories of Learning.’ The two of us write this chapter together as an assemblage of our diverse thoughts on learning through the Laboratories of Learning project. We utilize Laboratories of Learning as a platform of interrogation mirroring the notion of lab experiment where the levels of our inquiry become the different tests in the experiment. Therefore, the chapter is structured as a record of this process from a testing pilot to testing to the test results. In the testing pilot, we offer an example that took place prior to the launch of Laboratories of Learning but already explores rhizomatic learning and nomadic pedagogies highlighting our growing interest in these debates. In Test 1 we outline what we mean by rhizomatic learning and what nomadic lenses are there for us to apply. In Test 2 we explore why the Laboratories of Learning need to become rhizomatic and nomadic for us to investigate and understand how our students learn to learn and how communities of learning practice coalesce around these processes. Test 3 is dedicated to interrogating the Course Designer guidelines N. Sadowska (B) · M. Ingham University of the Arts London, London College of Communications, London, UK e-mail: [email protected] M. Ingham e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2023 M. S. Khine (ed.), Rhizome Metaphor, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-19-9056-4_6

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to explore how course teams are guided at our creative arts and design university in creating learning environments and what focus on learning to learn is given. Here we pay particular attention to ways in which the Course Designer recognizes the emergence of communities of learning practice. Finally, we conclude with the examination of the tests results where we reflect on what results emerged from this interrogation. Such an approach enables us to stay in keeping with the experimentation that is at the heart of Laboratories of Learning whilst sitting at the crossroads of the need for rigorous research process and the theoretical framing stemming from rhizomatic learning and nomadic pedagogies that inherently do not follow liner patterns. Moreover, we argue that the structure of the chapter becomes a blueprint for an inquiry methodology that can be applied in the Laboratories of Learning to enable research that itself is rhizomatic and nomadic in its process.

Testing Pilot: Becoming Lost and Found in Translation as a Nomadic Rhizomatic Space for Learning Before setting up the research project Laboratories of Learning the idea that learning is, ‘…continuous, dynamic process, making connections, using multiple paths, without beginnings and ends in a nomadic style (Khine, 2022) was explored in a 4-year research project Becoming Lost and Found in Translation (Ingham, 2021). This project was about how we learn through translation and how this is a politically and socially charged concept (Bozalek et al., 2018). One aspect of this project was that it happened in the corridors, walls, galleries, the liminal spaces of our creative arts and design university. It was nomadic by design. It inhabited the spaces of flow and flux and was highly visible to students and staff who transitioned through these open common environments (Shor and Freire, 1986) (Figs. 6.1, 6.2 and 6.3). Fig. 6.1 An interactive installation in the form of a table, typewriter, lamp, paper and pens where translations of the design school’s manifesto took place. This was in the education in progress exhibition at the London college of communication in 2019. Image by Mark Ingham

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Fig. 6.2 An interactive installation in the form of a table, typewriter, lamp, paper ad pens where translations of the design school’s manifesto took place (detail). This was in the education in progress exhibition at the London college of communication in 2019. Image by Mark Ingham

Fig. 6.3 The design school manifesto being translated and redrawn on the walls at the London college of communication. Image by Mark Ingham (2019)

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Inclusivity and critical thinking were central to this project as its aim was to give a sense of belonging and ownership to the students at our university (Freire, 2000; hooks, 1994). Criticisms emerged as the project developed and were voiced by the students who took part in the research. One solution the students proposed was for the content of their audio/visual recordings to come from asking questions about the manifesto, to criticize it, to ask people to translate them on the spot, ask them about their culture and stereotypes (Cowden & Singh, 2013). As we want Laboratories of Learning to be student centred and led, this project showed us how this was possible and how successful it was when students had the agency to take control of their own learning and learning environments. The spaces the students occupied throughout this project became, “…nomadic – smooth – space [as] an open territory, providing emancipatory potential to those who are situated in this space in contrast to striated, or gridded, space…” (Semetsky, 2008, pp. vii–viii). They became, “… ‘probe-heads’; … [becoming] cutting edges of deterritorialization [that] become operative and lines of deterritorialization positive and absolute, forming strange new becomings, new polyvocalities” (Deleuze & Guattari, 2004, p. 2011). As with this project we want the participants in our Laboratories of Learning to create new ways of learning, and new ways of thinking about learning, as well as demarcate communities of learning practice students and staff can belong to.

Test 1: Understanding Rhizomatic Learning and Rethinking What It Means to Learn with Nomadic Lenses, Considering What Theories and Practices Can Serve as a Guide Here we map out where the ideas of the rhizomatic learning and nomadic pedagogy emanate from and how they can be used in contemporary educational thinking. Both metaphors, the rhizomatic and the nomadic, have been employed in multiple ways and in various guises in ideas of how we best learn over the last 20 years. From directly thinking of rhizomes as spreading root systems in relation to the way we learn and nomads being wanders as in learners that are becoming, to the more complex philosophical, political and pedagogical ideas Deleuze and Guattari develop in their individual and co-authored books. Cromier (2011) uses both of their concepts when he argues that ‘[n]omads have the ability to learn rhizomatically, to ‘self-reproduce,’ to grow and change ideas as they explore new contexts. They are not looking for ‘the accepted way,’ they are not looking to receive instructions, but rather to create’ (Cromier, 2011). We see our Laboratories of Learning as being inhabited by nomadic thinkers who are encouraged to think differently and to create and learn rhizomatically. In their book A Thousand Plateaus: The Second Volume of Capitalism and Schizophrenia written in 1980, Deleuze and Guattari (2004) start with a discussion around different ways of thinking about thought, from the arboreal to the rhizomatic.

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This is set out in their first ‘plateau,’ Introduction: Rhizome (2004, pp. 3–28). Educational thinkers have used this alluring text to challenge ways we think about how we think in general, and specifically the ways we think about how we learn (Cromier, 2008, 2011). It posits the idea that we should look at thought acting, not in terms of hierarchical tree structures, but through the principles of a rhizomatic way of thinking that is a more articulate and a more productive way of understanding thought. As they say, “… the rhizome pertains to a map that must be produced, constructed, a map that is always detachable, connectible, reversible, modifiable, and has multiple entryways and exits and its own lines of flight” (Deleuze & Guattari, 2004, pp. 13–14). Radical ideas in books like A Thousand Plateaus can seem at first too difficult, too different, too farfetched, from what we think we know to be useful to utilize in our educational endeavours. This challenge of showing how these types of ideas can be put into practice in education has been taken up, over the last twenty years by many educational authors and thinkers, including Semetsky (2008), Semetsky and Masny (2013), Masny (2013, 2019),“ Bogue (2004, 2013), Cole (2008), Roy (2003), Strom (2018, 2019, 2020), Mycroft and Sidebottom (2018) and many others. They have used Deleuze and Guattari’s work to create new ways of thinking about and practicing education, as recognized by Andrew Murphie (2013), Associate Professor, from the University of New South Wales, Sydney in his review of the multi-authored book Deleuze and Education (Semetsky & Masny, 2013). “[this book] …returns us to a belief in learning’s connection with the world, in all its complexity and joy. With both pragmatism and philosophical rigour, it details an adventurous understanding of what education could become, set free from much of the paraphernalia of educational bureaucracy. This is Deleuze’s philosophy put to work in the best possible way” (Murphie, 2013 in Semetsky & Masny, 2013). This idea of an adventurous understanding of what education could become is at the heart of why we are developing our Laboratories of Learning at our creative arts and design university. We aspire it to be along the lines of flight that Erin Manning’s SenseLab (2022) (… a laboratory for thought in motion) at Concordia University has done so successfully over the last 18 years. They “…consider research to be creation in germ, and creation to produce its own concepts for thought … in an effort to conceive a working and thinking environment for the creation of new modes of encounter” (SenseLab, 2022). The disruptions brought about by the pandemic had an effect of making us teach and learn in ways many had not experienced or even recognized before. In this post-pandemic, or at least post-COVID-19/SARS-CoV-2 early mutations era of the pandemic, we ask ourselves what have we learnt from these multiple experiences? Have we deterittoralised (Deleuze & Guattari, 2004, pp. 10–11, 421–424) our ways of working so that ‘…learning can occur anywhere, anytime, and anyhow in our interconnected world? (Khine, 2022). Or are we now in the process of reterritorializing (Deleuze & Guattari, 2004, pp. 320–321) back to the fixed spaces and previously known methods of teaching we occupied before 2020? Did we at that point enter the ‘smooth space’s’ of the Nomad Territories (Deleuze & Guattari, 2004, pp. 445– 448) only now in 2022 to go back to the ‘striated spaces’ of bricks and mortar and inflexible timetabling?

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Mycroft and Sidebottom (2018) allude to this in their text Constellations of Practice when they say “[w]e began to question conventional patterns in education and how they were shaped by structures designed for another age. Rhizomatic working has energy, it brings an activist focus … crossing disciplines … it is essentially democratising, revealing unseen demarcation lines before breaching them” (pp. 170– 178). Written before the pandemic this and other texts on posthuman pedagogies (Bayley, 2018) had shown us already different ways education could be conceived and practiced. Our Laboratories of Learning takes up Mycroft’s and Sidebottom’s (2018) call to question the thinking or non-thinking about how we might break disciplinary boundaries and create spaces and places to test out how we learn and how communities of learning practice can coalesce around these processes. We see our Laboratories of Learning characteristics as nomadic in where it can physically and virtually wander and nomadic in terms of creating a space where we can wonder about how we learn to learn. As a nomadic entity, “…it can engage with radical politics as a spatial and (creative) intervention” (Beck, 2017). As Deleuze and Guattari (2004) say, nomadism for them is a state of “becoming, heterogeneity, infinitesimal, passage to the limit, continuous variation.” We concur with the idea that the Laboratories of Learning will be a “…nomadic classroom, [and] through the process of deterritorialization [will] puncture the academic, institutionalized educational space and lays bare the vast amount of possibilities found, very literally, outside of the classroom and a place that remakes the space that is occupied, [and] makes anew the identities that inhabit the new classroom space” (Beck, 2017). In our Laboratories of Learning we are using ‘Deleuze and Guattari’s’ notion of a ‘people-yet-to-come’ as people in-becoming is more mundane because for them the ‘people-yet-to-come’ are the people who are already here (rather than an other radical people who are waiting in an other future time and place). These concepts are yet more radical because rather than locate potentiality in far-off futures, Deleuze and Guattari ask us to see potentiality in what is imminent, in the already-existing processes of becoming around us and indeed, throughout us here and now (Hroch, 2014, p. 50).

Test 2: Laboratories of Learning Becoming Rhizomatic and Nomadic Something in the world forces us to think. This something is an object not of recognition but of a fundamental encounter (Deleuze, 1997, p. 139).

Our project, Laboratories of Learning had several questions to start it off. These were, what conditions would prompt students to (1) talk about learning as a practice beyond subject knowledge; (2) what conditions would be needed for students to want to share with others insights about their learning, and (3) what conditions would be needed to create student communities of learning? (Sadowska & Ingham, 2021). In responding to those questions, we adopted Dave Cromier’s (2008) idea of “…a rhizomatic model

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of learning [and a] rhizomatic model of knowledge [which] is negotiated, and the learning experience is a social as well as a personal knowledge-creation process with mutable goals and constantly negotiated premises.” To contextualize Laboratories of Learning we look in more detail at how and why we use Deleuzoguattarian ideas of the rhizomatic and nomadic. As Deleuze (1968/1997) argues in Difference and Repetition “[w]e learn nothing from those who say: ‘Do as I do’. Our only teachers are those who tell us to ‘do with me’ and are able to emit signs to be developed in heterogeneity rather than propose gestures for us to reproduce” (Deleuze, 1997, p. 23). David Cole articulates this further when he says, “pedagogy is … not something that is “done to one” or “is done by one to others,” but is something that one participates in, it is a mode of co-construction, [where] teaching and learning become fused…” (Cole, 2016). Our aim with Laboratories of Learning is precisely to have a place where there is a fusion of how we learn and how we teach, to create spaces that allow for these collective collaborations (Davis McGaw and McGaw-Evans, 2021). We argue that these fusions and collaborations give rise to communities of learners that thrive in nomadic pedagogies but often struggle to conform to strictly defined structured and transmissional educational approaches. The emancipatory nature of Deleuze and Guattari’s thinking in relation to pedagogy and learning are exemplified by their concepts of the rhizome and the nomadic. In this chapter we develop their ideas to help us understand further how our Laboratories of Learning can be places and spaces where we can “…bring students and teachers more fully into dialogue about assessment (and about education more broadly) […] and most radical, change we can work toward. If students don’t show up to these conversations, ask what systemic harm is making them unwelcome” (Stommel, 2020). One other inspiration worth mentioning comes from the authors of Steal This Classroom Cohen and Dalke (2019) who in the concluding epilogue on their website sum up what a classroom could be by saying it is “[a] bird sanctuary, guerrilla cell, resistance group. An ecotone, on the border, high density, high diversity. A testing ground: random discoveries, edge effects. A wildscape, ruin, liminal space, boxed in-but-not enclosable, ripe for breaking through. In restraint, bursting out, faithless. Neither this nor that but piercing, intense, unpredictable.” We see our Laboratories of Learning as having many of these attributes as eventful spaces of fundamental encounters where students take ownership of their learning by experimenting with others and others’ ideas about how we learn. We want these safe and daring spaces to be places where they test, experiment, and collaborate collectively to enhance their creative endeavours and adventures. In the following section, we build on our initial rethinking of what it means to learn and what conditions are needed for learning to occur that prompted the Laboratories of Learning project. In the second part of this chapter, we examine how the courses we design can also become Laboratories of Learning, prompting students to develop an understanding of who they are as learners and more importantly what communities of learning practice emerge. To ask these questions we utilize a Course Designer guidance produced by colleagues at our creative arts and design university.

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Test 3: Interrogating ‘Course Designer’ for Evidence of How Courses Can Become Laboratories of Learning Often the site for communities of learning practice to emerge is already designated and bounded by the existing systems and frameworks set up by the institutional structures. The systems and frameworks can be implicit (disciplinary associations or creative processes) and explicit such as curriculum design and course structures (Cohen & Dalke, 2019; Cole, 2016). In all cases how communities of learning practice are co-designed in those spaces is a process that can stay within the boundaries of the systems or can cross these boundaries and enable much more rhizomatic set of connections and networks (Cromier, 2008, 2011). As Rosi Braidotti argues “[c]reativity is a nomadic process in that it entails the active displacement of dominant formation of identity, memory and identification. Becoming has to do with emptying out the self, opening it out to possible encounters with the ‘outside’” (Braidotti, 2011, p. 235). In Test 3 we interrogate a set of guidelines (Course Designer) produced by our institution to assist course teams to develop degrees. In this process, we acknowledge this publication as an example of the aforementioned existing systems and institutional structures. However, in our test, we examine in what way these institutional systems and structures support students in becoming learners and acknowledge the existence of communities of learning practice, fostering their growth and development.

Course Designer 1: Introduction and Resources List https://www.arts.ac.uk/__data/assets/pdf_file/0024/190392/Course-Designer-1-Int roduction-and-Resources-PDF-257KB.pdf. Curriculum design and course structures often become systems and frameworks that define the territory and tend to dictate and influence the opportunity for codesign of communities of learning practice (Bayley, 2018). Thus, to understand how curriculum design and resulting structures engage with co-design of communities of learning we turn to an artefact entitled the Course Designer a curriculum design tool created by colleagues from Teaching and Learning Exchange (TLE) at our creative arts and design university. The Course Designer is a guide for course teams to design or review courses for (re)validations. The tool is divided into six sections each represented by a document publicly accessible on the Teaching, Learning and Employability Exchange (2022) site. Each section consists of a definition of the key component followed by guidelines on best practices, supported by practical exercises. The intention is to design a curriculum that is student-centred but also complies with the UK higher education quality requirements. In our testing we argue, the emerging course systems and structures directly inform how communities of learning practice

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come together within a course between students as peers, staff as peers and staff and students. Whereas the authors of this publication explain: The overall aim of the Course Designer is to facilitate key moments in planning an effective curriculum. Each section can be used separately to focus on discrete standardised tasks. These might include institutional and sector requirements, such as producing programme specifications or communicating the course profile or unique features, whilst meeting sectorwide benchmark and quality standards (Stephens et al., 2022).

Course Designer 2: Vision and Values https://www.arts.ac.uk/__data/assets/pdf_file/0025/190393/Course-Designer-2-Vis ion-and-Values-PDF-227KB.pdf. When shaping the vision and values that need to underpin a course design, teams are guided to consider their own standpoint alongside a wider context of disciplinary knowledges and skillsets, industry standards and quality frameworks. The document also advises the need to factor in educational philosophies that can shape course design. The role of the guidance is to invite teams to explore and reflect upon the values and beliefs that are drawn upon to shape the course design through the process of checking where the course should be positioned but also to recognise assumptions and possible biases that might affect the design. The guidance also highlights the importance of students’ engagement in shaping the future curriculum of the course. This is focused predominantly in two ways (1) the graduate attributes that students will develop by the end of the course, and (2) the agency that students will be given while undertaking the course to influence their own learning journey. In particular, the Course Designer guidance on students’ agency is telling in the way the teams are advised to co-design learning on the course. As the document states student agency stems from creating “[a] space for student agency in the curriculum—e.g. student-led contributions, student well-being, student choice in assessment and co-marking, peer learning, students co-creating content, choosing texts, and co-evaluating courses each contribute to course culture” (Stephens et al., 2022). Interestingly the guidance advises teams to consider students learning experience as individuals and ensure they have the agency to influence it but does not engage with the fact that course design also influences how a community of learning practice forms through various stakeholders coming together in learning and teaching. The guidance appears not to consider the opportunities a course design could draw at its conception to see itself as a community of learning practice. In advising teams to reflect on their values and beliefs it falls short to recognise that a course design shapes communities of learning practice just as much as those values and beliefs interact and shape learning experiences. We argue that by recognizing this process not only at the individual level ensuring student and staff voice counts, there is also a need to recognise how these individuals come together and create synergies that shape and inform the ways in which students and staff learn on the course.

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As Roy (2003) puts it in Teachers in Nomadic Spaces: Deleuze and Curriculum “the pragmatic purpose [of Laboratories of Learning is] to introduce a ‘swerve’ or deviation in the plane of taken-for-granted assumptions by means of which a new experiment of thought could be inserted in the interstices that might help teachers get an insight into the generative possibilities of the situation” (p. 2).

Course Designer 3: Defining Course Aims https://www.arts.ac.uk/__data/assets/pdf_file/0026/190394/Course-Designer-3-Def ining-Course-Aims-PDF-213KB.pdf. In creating the course aims teams are advised to consider the purpose of the course and the intentions it is meant to fulfil. The guidance clarifies that aims indicate “who the prospective students are and where they might be going when they finish the course” (Stephens et al., 2022). The guidance indicates that course aims are a way for the course design to be mapped within a wider territory to manage various stakeholders’ expectations. The document outlines the scope of course aims ranging from communicating overall purpose, students’ learning, context such as industry and socio-cultural influences, quality benchmarks, graduate attributes as well as a learning journey. The course aims effectively act as the guide to the course’s strategic direction. This section of the Course Designer acknowledges the importance of shaping learning to meet different students’ needs and in particular their learning journey but it approaches students very much as individuals with “… wide range of backgrounds and cultures, and curricula are designed with this range in mind.” Although we are keen to support such an approach, seeing it as the core of student-centred learning, it is important to highlight that the guidance does not acknowledge that these individual students also come together and form a community of learning practice. Interestingly the Course Designer recommends that teams “[create] personas in order to visualise students [which in turn] can assist in writing the overarching purpose and intentions of the course design. Course designers consider ‘who’ the students are, or would be, as well as their contribution to the course” (Stephens et al., 2022). Thus such consideration of students as individuals means that there is no particular guidance on how to draft specific aims that acknowledge the course as a community of learning practice. We argue that recognizing in the aims the individuality of students as learners only goes so far and misses on the opportunities co-design learning can provide when students and staff come together in communities of learners. It also means that teams are advised to focus on designing aims for students and miss out on the opportunities that co-design with students in these wider communities could lead to more diverse and richer learning experiences for all. The synergies that stem from these interactions offer numerous opportunities for learning and ultimately focus on what shapes students’ learning and what overall learning journey the course offers in a much more engaging, dynamic and adaptive manner. We argue that such synergies

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are more reflective of the needs of the current and future students and are reflected far more in rhizomatic learning and nomadic pedagogies. Moreover, there is no mention of the way that course aims to play a role in creating boundaries to the way the community of learning practice comes together and is able to operate within as well as without itself and wider institutional structures and systems. This is particularly important considering the strategic role aims play in shaping the overall student learning experience.

Course Designer 4: Crafting Learning Outcomes https://www.arts.ac.uk/__data/assets/pdf_file/0027/190395/Course-Designer-4-Cra fting-Learning-Outcomes-PDF-255KB.pdf. The section guiding teams on how to develop learning outcomes (LOs) indicates that the purpose of LOs is to highlight what “… students should be able to do on completion … [t]hese outcomes can be worded in terms of demonstrable knowledge, skills or behaviours” (Currant et al., 2022). The document outlines what the role of LOs is as follows: (1) what is expected of students, (2) how staff need to design and deliver the learning, teaching and assessment on the course, (3) how to create a coherent learning journey for the students, (4) how to recognise student achievement in terms of credit framework, (5) how to meet the institutional validation and benchmark obligations (Currant et al., 2022). The guidance on LOs design recognizes that course design engages in shaping students’ learning by highlighting the need to outline in LOs what is expected of students, how teams need to shape a coherent learning journey and how to measure students’ achievement. Through their inherent role LOs are very operational and tend to focus on defining the relationships between different elements within the course design. Moreover, they indicate the nature of the relationships between student engagement with the course and the offered learning and the staff approaches to teaching. The LOs indicate the responsibilities both staff and students have in shaping learning practices. What the guidance does not acknowledge is how the LOs through the definition of the responsibilities towards learning have effectively co-designed the community of learners. Despite defining those relationships towards the curriculum design and those responsibilities the guidance does not engage with the fact that LOs are shaping communities of learning practice. The LOs mark the scope within which these communities can function and operate as well as the boundaries to indicate the edges of the communities, but the guidance does not engage with this process. The guidance also does not explore learning as a collective endeavour but rather positions it as individual interactions and whereas in previous Course Designer sections make some reference to agency students have to inform these interactions, in LOs the nature of guidance is a lot more prescriptive. Contrary to the Course Designer recommendations, we see our Laboratories of Learning in a similar way as Christian Beck’s “…nomadic classroom, where the agency of the nomad is appended

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to the class and not to singular students or the instructor, [and] deterritorializes striated space so as to grant the class participants with a higher degree of determinacy” (Beck, 2017).

Course Designer 5: Designing Inclusive Assessment https://www.arts.ac.uk/__data/assets/pdf_file/0028/190396/Course-Designer-5-Des igning-Inclusive-Assessment-PDF-296KB.pdf. The Designing Inclusive Assessment section in the Course Designer is dedicated to guidance outlining the key considerations in the process of designing assessments. The section outlines what makes a good assessment followed by highlighting the difference between summative and formative assessment processes. Interestingly, when designing curricula, course teams often dedicate a substantial amount of time to creating assessments that are authentic and enable students to find meaning in their learning. However, the Course Designer guidance seems to focus more on the functionality of the assessment as the priority not so much on the learning it can support. Nonetheless, this section of Course Designer also more readily recognizes students’ learning journey and the role assessment can play in it. “[a]ssessment has a major impact on students and their learning. Summative assessment in particular has the potential to define a student’s self-belief and future prospects” (Stephens et al., 2022). Designing inclusive assessment keeps in mind individual differences between students for the purpose of accessibility, differences between cohorts of students, and differences between the function of assessment and its role in the scheduled activities of a course (Stephens et al., 2022). In this section of the Course Designer more than any other the guidance highlights the role assessment plays in fostering individual students learning alongside the way different cohorts of students demonstrate their learning through assessments. Although the guidance does not make the leap to consider that assessments are evidence of the way student communities become communities of learning practice, this section of Course Designer is effectively the first that refers to students learning as a cohort. It also recognizes this learning can be shaped by assessment through inclusive approaches. Moreover, it acknowledges that formative assessment enables both staff and students to recognise in what way learning takes place for individual students and monitor the progress of that learning. However, this section of the Course Designer guidelines also comes closest to highlighting the rhizomatic nature of learning. We need to both vary and diversify assessment for inclusivity. In creative arts courses, assessment needs to be flexible: it should be adaptive to include and capture the actual learning that takes place in practice, especially where students’ learning has divergent, original and creative outputs, and cannot always be planned or intended in advance’ (Stephens et al., 2022).

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Upon reflection, we argue that assessments when considered in the context of nomadic pedagogies and rhizomatic learning become moments of evidence where communities of learning practice are seen, reorganize, or transform. We argue that assessments become artefacts of those communities of learning practice marking their journeys not as individual students but rather as communities and nowhere is it as evident in the way we design learning experiences for our students as it is in the assessment process.

Course Designer 6: Course Structure https://www.arts.ac.uk/__data/assets/pdf_file/0029/190397/Course-designer-6-Cou rse-Structure-PDF-207KB.pdf. The section of the Course Designer dedicated to the course structure focuses on the functionality of the course, in particular, it is a means of communicating about the course with various stakeholders. “A well-designed course structure will communicate itself clearly to stakeholders, including potential students, registry, validating committees, and the wider academic community” (Stephens et al., 2022). Within the process of designing the course the structure can also assist students and staff to make decisions about the learning journey the course entails. The key areas that involve course structure as highlighted in the Course Designer are (1) sequencing of the content, (2) wayfinding through the learning experience and (3) a holistic narrative of the course. Interestingly, the Course Designer assigned the responsibility of the sequencing and narrative building to staff and the wayfinding to students. What is not explicit is how this could be a collaborative responsibility where staff and students can share the responsibility to different degrees depending on the stage of the course development. Upon reflection, we argue that the role of the course structure has the potential to extend beyond what the Course Designer guidance outlines. In the context of rhizomatic learning and nomadic pedagogies, a course structure is an essential tool for a community of learning practice (1) to orientate around the learning experience, (2) to identify any navigational markers and (3) to spot anchoring points. In this section, the Course Designer guides teams in considering how individual students learning journeys can be visualized through diagrams or communicated to prospective applicants. “Recent innovative approaches to course design use the student journey to emphasise student experience and a process model of curriculum design. This approach meets the requirements of different individuals and a broad spectrum of student identities” (Stephens et al., 2022). We argue the structure can also communicate the learning journey of the community of learning practice. In Education Needs to Get a Grip on Life in Carlin and Wallin (2014), Jason J. Wallin, introduces us to the idea of a ‘lived curriculum,’ that moves away from a calcified idea of curricula that is guided by a bureaucratic idea of what ‘ought to be run’ (p. 124). He uses the idea of a supple line, that, “…becomes a way to begin thinking about the composition of a people whose production is not simply

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reflected in the planned curriculum but whose desire cuts across the molar line of standardization and conformism…” (p. 124). We see the Laboratories of Learning as one way for the creative student’s experience in our creative arts and design university to be transdisciplinary. To help us go beyond the content of a given curriculum and enable our staff and students to look more closely at the processes of learning and how we can enhance our student’s experiences of their chosen course.

Conclusions from Our Test Results In conducting our interrogation of Course Designer guidance we have learned that typical guidance on how to create a learning environment for our students has quite an ambivalent relationship with recognizing how students learn to learn and how these frameworks underpin and shape the emergence of communities of learning practice. Despite the purpose of such guidance to create opportunities for learning, we note that it is not always made explicit to the course teams how important it is to ask about how students become learners and understand how they learn, which we argue is a fundamental question. As Fendler (2013) argues in her article Becoming-Learner: Coordinates for Mapping the Space and Subject of Nomadic Pedagogy: [t]he eventful space emerges as a useful concept, referring to a territory defined by practicebased learning, inhabited by a network of people, ideas, and objects in movement. Thinking of place in terms of practice is a strategy for uprooting the inquiry and setting it in motion, to better follow the mobile and transitory learning trajectories of young people.

Both in the project Becoming Lost and Found in Translation and our current research project Laboratories of Learning we create eventful spaces that give students the opportunity to explore, unencumbered by regimes of assessment, how they learn. They will create their own maps of learning and not just rely on the tracings of what their past learning experiences have taught them. However, the interrogation of the Course Designer guidance has also enabled us to understand that institutional structures and systems with the associated guidance are deeply ingrained in the environment we create for our students to support their learning. As the Course Designer evidenced, these structures and systems are not shaped around rhizomatic learning nor utilize nomadic lenses to consider how and where learning happens. The significant focus on individual students and the formatting of their learning experience might ask a question What is suitable learning in this case? but rarely asks How students learn? and even more sporadic is the question How staff and students become a community of learning practice? Upon reflection, we do not challenge the broad elements the Course Designer guidance identifies nor the role these elements play in designing an effective degree. However, we argue that it is critical for such guidance to acknowledge when designing a course, that course teams effectively shape and influence the emergence of communities of learning practice. These emergent communities can influence the learning

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experience for the individuals as much as create synergies that shape the learning of these groups as a whole. Those synergies, we argue, can only operate through rhizomatic learning processes and need to be scaffolded by nomadic pedagogies. Our laboratory experiment narrated in this chapter has illuminated that giving students the opportunity to understand for themselves how they are learning is the first step in the process of benefiting from rhizomatic learning. The second step, we argue, is nurturing of processes that enable communities of learning to emerge from the synergies that result from the encounters of the students and the shared journeys they undertake on a course. The third step in this process is the need to underpin steps one and two by nomadic pedagogies to enable emergence, adaptability and dynamic engagement with the learning process. These three elements we argue can lead to an ecology of learning where students are as much participants as contributors, making their learning experience much more authentic as well as transformative. The empirical proof of whether our Laboratories of Learning will help our students become more of what they want to be is in the application of the testing methodology we narrated here, such as testing out of ideas, testing of others, testing of spaces and testing of moments. We have learnt to be as open as possible and open to the critiques staff and students will offer and at the same time be aware of the dangers of always going back to what is already known. To combat and resist the forces of conventional wisdoms about learning we have used ideas from the poststructural thinking of Deleuze and Guattari to help us put into practice nomadic pedagogy so that we can start on the path to learning rhizomatically. As Deleuze (1997) said in 1968, “[w]hat does it mean ‘to learn’?”, and argued that, “[l]earning takes place not in the relation between a representation and an action (reproduction of the Same) but in the relation between a sign and a response (encounter with the Other).” He wanted us to learn through contemplation not just action (Deleuze, 1997, p. 22). Our Laboratories of Learning aim to be spaces where new ideas about learning are contemplated and generated and put into practice and co-produced by all our agents of learning, human and non-human at our creative art and design university and beyond. Moreover, we invite readers to join our Laboratories of Learning and collaboratively create their experiments to test how they learn to learn and how communities of learning practice come together in their contexts.

References Arao, B., & Clemens, K. (2013). From safe spaces to brave spaces: A New Way to Frame Dialogue. Around Diversity and Social Justice. in: Landreman, L.M. (Ed.), The Art of Effective Facilitation: Reflections from Social Justice Educators. Stylus Publishing. https://bit.ly/3ZfNgaX Bayley, A. (2018). Posthuman pedagogies in practice: Arts based approaches for developing participatory futures. Palgrave Macmillan. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-70978-9 Beck, C. (2017). The nomadic classroom: Encountering literary art through affective learning. In Teaching space, place, and literature. Routledge. eBook ISBN9781315171142.

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Bogue, D. (2004). Search, swim and see: Deleuze’s apprenticeship in signs and pedagogy of image. Educational Philosophy and Theory, 36(3), 327–342. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1469-5812.2004. 00071.x Bogue, R. (2013). The master apprentice. In: Semetsky, I. (Ed.), Deleuze and Education. Edinburgh University Press Bozalek, V., Bayat, A., Gachago, D., Motala, S., & Mitchell, V. (2018). A pedagogy of responseability. In V. Bozalek, R. Braidotti, T. Shefer, & M. Zembylas (Eds.), Socially just pedagogies: Posthumanist, feminist and materialist perspectives in higher education (pp. 97–112). Bloomsbury Academic. https://doi.org/10.5040/9781350032910.ch-006 Braidotti, R. (2011). Nomadic theory: The portable Rosi Braidotti. Columbia University Press. Carlin, M., & Wallin, J. (Eds.). (2014). Deleuze and Guattari, politics and education: For a peopleyet-to-come. Bloomsbury Academic. Cole, D. R. (2008). Deleuze and the narrative forms of educational otherness. In: Semetsky, I. (Ed.) Nomadic Education: Variations on a theme by Deleuze and Guattari. Sense Publishers. http://hdl. handle.net/10453/7953 Cole, D. R. (2016). Unmaking the work of pedagogy through Deleuze and Guattari. In M. Peters (Ed.), Encyclopedia of educational philosophy and theory. Springer. https://doi.org/10.1007/978981-287-532-7_67-1 Cohen, J., & Dalke, A. (2019). Steal this classroom: Teaching and learning unbound. Punctum Books. https://bit.ly/3a7pVE5 Cowden, S., & Singh, G. (2013). Acts of knowing: Critical pedagogy in, against and beyond the university. Bloomsbury Publishing. https://bit.ly/38PmJGH Cromier, D. (2008). Rhizomatic education: Community as curriculum. https://bit.ly/3bBaHaJ Cromier, D. (2011). Rhizomatic learning—Why we teach? https://bit.ly/3uElRT1 Currant, N. et al. (2022). Course designer 4: Crafting Learning Outcomes. University of the Arts London. https://bit.ly/3ELEpp7 Davis McGaw, M. A., & McGaw-Evans, S. (2021). The shared work of learning: Lifting educational achievement through collaboration. In Participatory pedagogy: Emerging research and opportunities. https://doi.org/10.4018/978-1-5225-8964-8.ch004 Deleuze, G. (1997). Difference and repetition. Athlone Press. Deleuze, G., & Guattari, F. (2004). A thousand plateaus: Capitalism and schizophrenia. Continuum. Fendler, R. (2013). Becoming-learner: Coordinates for mapping the space and subject of nomadic pedagogy. Qualitative Inquiry, 19(10), 786–793. https://doi.org/10.1177/1077800413503797 Freire, P. (2000). Pedagogy of the oppressed. Continuum. https://bit.ly/30HDjpu Hroch, P. (2014). Deleuze, Guattari, and environmental pedagogy and politic: Ritournelles for a planet-yet-to-come. In M. Carlin & J. Wallin (Eds.), Deleuze and Guattari, politics and education: For a people-yet-to-come. Bloomsbury Academic. hooks, b. (1994). Teaching to transgress. Routledge. https://bit.ly/1TLyvp4 Ingham, M. (2021). Becoming lost and found in translation. Cumulus Rome 2021. Design cultures (of) revolution (pp. 17–34). https://bit.ly/32sp3pR Khine, M. S. (Ed.) (2022). Rhizomatic Learning: Poststructural Thinking to Nomadic Pedagogy, Call for Chapters Manning, E. (2022). SENSELAB. http://erinmovement.com/about-senselab Masny, D. (2013). Cartographies of becoming in education: A Deleuze-Guattari perspective (254 pp.). Sense Publishers. ISBN 978-94-6209-168-9 Masny, D. (2019). Deleuze and Guattari and teacher education. https://doi.org/10.1093/acrefore/ 9780190264093.013.374 Murphie, A. (2013). Review of Deleuze and education. https://edinburghuniversitypress.com/bookdeleuze-and-education.html Mycroft, L., & Sidebottom, K. (2018). Constellations of practice. In Identity and resistance in further education. Routledge. eBook ISBN 9781351232951. Roy, K. (2003). Teachers in nomadic spaces. Peter Lang.

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Chapter 7

Rhizomatic Learning for Nomadic Learners: A Postdigital Education Blended Conceptual Metaphor Framework Samia Kara

Introduction In 2019, COVID-19 visited planet earth, made some of its inhabitants victims, and obliged the rest to stay in confinement. At the beginning, the latter thought it would be a matter of days but the situation remained for long months until vaccines appeared. As soon as people started to recover from the shock, they realized that they had to resume their daily activities without leaving their homes as COVID-19 was waiting behind the door for a possible tragic entry. The solution laid in mobile phones, iPads, laptops, and PCs, which became their best friends allowing them to cater to many of their needs, especially those in relation to their progeny’s education. Indeed, platforms, virtual courses, and social media bridged the time gap and enabled many learners to catch up remotely with their educational pathway. However, this was not the case with everybody as digital tools and their knowhow-to-use knowledge was not equitably affordable. In addition, many of those who had the means to access these tools and knowledge sank under the high waves of information failing to sift and tag their requirements. That is why; a new conceptualization of education is indispensable in the sense that it has to go beyond its transmitting knowledge and target learners in terms of empowerment and responsibility for knowledge use (UNESCO, 2021). In fact, humanity faces the challenge that “there is tremendous transformative potential in digital technologies, but we have not yet figured out how to deliver on these many promises” (UNESCO, 2021, p. 34). This might be because teachers and educationists still think of learning and knowledge in the classical arborescent dichotomous and top-down way. This philosophy, which has prevailed for centuries, can no longer accompany the new technology-driven educational world. Undeniably, it confines the learners between walls in institutions S. Kara (B) The German University of Cairo, Cairo, Egypt e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2023 M. S. Khine (ed.), Rhizome Metaphor, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-19-9056-4_7

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and compels them to ingurgitate a fractured knowledge that has little if no relation with their life in all its aspects. Today’s learners are real self-relying, flexible and freedom-loving contributors to knowledge who move constantly, think differently and respond immediately to situations and contexts. They spend a lot of their time on the network with virtual friends and communicate using a language that academicians would not admit easily in their dictionaries. They are also full of energy and believe in their capacity to change the world. This chapter is an account of the paradigm shift that took place in today’s educational sphere. It attempts to redefine learning and learners in the light of new virtual realities. Using a blended conceptual metaphor framework with the two input spaces ‘Rhizomatic Learning’ and ‘Nomadic Learners’, it draws upon two concepts advanced by Deleuze and Guattari (1980), namely, ‘Rhizome’ and ‘Nomadology’. It also strives to answer the following questions: – – – – – – – – – –

What is rhizomatic learning? What are nomadic learners? How do connectivism and e-social constructivism define them? What type of language do these communities use to communicate? What skills do they already have? What are they in need of acquiring? To what extent are collaboration and autonomy important for them? What results did some researchers reach with and about them? Why did the term ‘postdigital’ emerge? What are some of the recommendations for future research about them?

The Blended Conceptual Metaphor: A Brief Explanation of the Instrument As concepts guide thoughts and shape people’s perceptions, interactions with the world, and relations with others, a conceptual system plays an essential role in determining people’s daily realities (Lakoff & Johnson, 1980). In other words, individuals understand the world around them and interact with it owing to the comprehension they make of it and which comes in the form of concepts that are part of a system. According to Lakoff and Johnson (1980), these concepts and the system they make are naturally metaphorical since metaphors are prevalent in everyday life thought and action. Thus, when we combine concepts metaphorically, we make conceptual metaphors. A conceptual metaphor is “understanding one domain of experience (that is typically abstract) in terms of another (that is typically concrete)” (Kövecses, 2017). For instance, the concept ‘argument’ and the conceptual metaphor ‘argument is war’ have a presence in language in expressions such as:

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AN ARGUMENT IS WAR Your claims are indefensible. He attacked every weak point in my argument. His criticisms were right on target. I demolished his argument. I’ve never won an argument with him. You disagree? Okay, shoot! If you use that strategy, he’ll wipe you out. He shot down all of my arguments (Lakoff & Johnson, 1980, p. 4).

Actions performed in arguing follow partially the same structure present in the war concept despite the absence of physical battle (Lakoff & Johnson, 1980). On the strength of Kövecses (2002), the domain that provides the metaphorical expressions necessary for the understanding of another domain is called the source domain. Similarly, the domain that is understood thanks to the source domain is called the target domain. Consequently, the conceptual metaphor ‘Argument is War’ has ‘war’ as a source domain and ‘argument’ as a target domain. So far, what emerges is a description of a target domain concept through a source domain one using metaphor. This model got a step ahead with the conceptual integration (blending) theory by Fauconnier and Turner (2002) which perceives human thought as an integration/blending of mental spaces. Mental spaces are provisional conceptualization packets made for the sake of local understanding while thinking and talking take place (Fauconnier & Turner, 2002, p. 102). They are usually created dynamically and are not complete representations of global and general world knowledge. Instead, they selectively use semantic content, which is viable for the interpretation of a specific set of data (Kowalewski, n.d.). In a conceptual blending model, there should be at least four types of mental spaces. On the strength of Fauconnier and Turner (2002), two of them are input spaces that constitute the sources of concepts to be blended. Then, there is also the generic space, which includes common elements in input spaces (Fauconnier & Turner, 2002). The fourth space is the blended one and it includes projections from the two input spaces (Fauconnier & Turner, 2002).

Rhizomatic Learning for Nomadic Learners: A Blended Conceptual Metaphor Framework As shown in the following Fig. 7.1, ‘Rhizomatic Learning for Nomadic Learners’ blended conceptual metaphor framework is basically a blend that has as its input spaces ‘Rhizomatic Learning’ (wherein the target domain is ‘Learning’ and the source domain is the ‘Rhizome’) and ‘Nomadic Learners’ (wherein the target domain is ‘Learners’ and the source domain is ‘Nomads’). A full elaboration on the content of the framework shall follow in the subsequent sections.

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Fig. 7.1 Rhizomatic learning for nomadic learners: a blended conceptual metaphor framework

Input Space One: Rhizomatic Learning In their ‘Capitalisme et Schizophrénie: Mille Plateaux’ a philosopher and a psychiatrist decided to review the western conceptualization of knowledge and the world in terms of what they called ‘old and tired classical thought’ (Deleuze & Guattari, 1980: 11). Using the root type of books (the book refers to knowledge) as an imitation of the world, Deleuze and Guattari (1980) postulated that—as per the old thought, the tree is already the image of the world and the root is the image of the world-tree. Thus, the root-book (knowledge) reproduces the world through procedures whereby the rule of ‘one becoming two… and two becoming four’ constitutes the binary logic of the spiritual and arborescent reality of the said book (knowledge). A case in point cited by these authors is Chomsky’s syntagmatic tree that starts at S and proceeds by dichotomy within the discipline of Linguistics. Indeed:

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Tree thought is hierarchical and centered around a trunk and its roots, branches, stems, and leaves. The relations between these parts are pre-established, as in the trees used in both logic and linguistics that divide and subdivide branches and fix how and under which conditions, and even when, constants are related, largely by means of dichotomies and chains (Genosko, 2020, p. 1).

Learning as per the arborescent model is far from being adequate because of its impartiality in relation to confining learners in institutional striations and knowledge that is fissured (Allan, 2011). Indeed, this type of root-knowledge comprehension and organization lacks multiplicity, which is a key feature in nature and by virtue of which roots are in reality taproots with multiple, i.e. non-dichotomous, lateral, and circular ramifications (Deleuze & Guattari, 1980). When a taproot is subject to extremity destruction, many sub-roots attach to it and develop. This phenomenon is what these authors referred to in relation to the new radicle-system book (knowledge) that endorses today’s chaotic world in the form of a radicle-chaosmos instead of a root-cosmos. Multiplicity takes place not by adding a superior dimension but by subtracting (n − 1), the unique from the dimensions already available in a system Deleuze and Guattari (1980) called ‘rhizome’. Botanically, the rhizome functions by modification, extension, conquest, capture and stitching, and has the following estimated features (Deleuze & Guattari, 1980): – Connection and heterogeneity: Any point can (and should) be connected to another point that may have nothing to do with its domain. – Multiplicity: It has neither a subject nor an object but has importance, determinations, and magnitude. – Asignifying rupture: It can be broken at a particular point; however, it departs again following one of its lines or other lines. – Cartography and decalcomania: Unlike the tree, which follows the logic of calque and reproduction, it draws its own map and does not follow any structural or generative model to reproduce it. Subsequently and as maintained by Genosko (2020, p. 1) “Rhizome thought does not have a center since connections may be established at any time between disparate parts. Rhizomes proliferate and their connections multiply, largely unconstrained by hierarchies and pre-existing pathways”. Thus, a rhizome is in fact a representation of the expanding neoliberal globalization (Berardi, 2014) that is reaching every aspect of human life. When it comes to learning and as a metaphor, the rhizome is a sort of an intermediate comprehensive cosmos wherein participants fit and movement happens constantly (Allan, 2011). It is the current knowledge network, which is accessible online, and to which individuals in varying groups add their nodes (Cormier, 2008). Consequently, learning is presently versatile and everlastingly regenerating in nature. It does not take place following specific directions and steps but grows as per immediate needs. It also transcends time, space, and people and works on building communities of learners ready and able to adapt to new circumstances. As to its relationship with knowledge, it has also changed: “Knowledge informs learning; what we learn informs community; and the community in turn creates knowledge. And the reverse:

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knowledge builds community, while community defines what is learned, and what is learned becomes knowledge” (Downes, 2012, p. 15). In other words, there is a mutual circular nurturing happening between learning and knowledge via the community, which acts as a channel for knowledge effect on learning as well as learning effect on knowledge. With its walls as landscape delimiters, teachers and books as knowledge sources, copybooks and boards as supports for information production, and seated students that rely on its environmental characteristics, the learning classroom in its traditional form has ceased to exist. It has surpassed its physical existence and has grown into a much larger globe that reveals itself in indefinite ways at each fingertip touch. Actually, the complete human experience has mutated following the transformation of the alphabetical infosphere and the mechanical technosphere into a digital form (Berardi, 2014). Therefore, knowledge is no longer a static entity against which learning assimilation and evaluation take place. It is a moving target (Cormier, 2008) and like any moving target, it needs a moving sharpshooter. Rhizomatic learning adjusts to this knowledge as it frees the curriculum from predefined inputs from experts (Cormier, 2008). In fact, a community whose contributions respond to changes, the way the rhizome does, builds and negotiates the curriculum (Cormier, 2008).

Input Space Two: Nomadic Learners Deleuze and Guattari (1980, p. 34) pointed to the fact that history is “always written from the perspective of the sedentary and in the name of a unitary state apparatus, at least a possible one, even when nomads are the topic” [Author’s translation]. They further insisted: “What is missing is a nomadology, the contrary of history”. This is understandable when we consider that history by nature is linked to geographical sites, whereas nomadology is mainly about deterritorialization (and reterritorialization) resulting from nomads’ waves and tides. A territory is by definition the milieu of a group of, for instance, wolves, rats or nomads set up by the interaction patterns that secure a particular stability and location (Günzel, 1998). Nomads are “people living in arid, if not desert regions who, out of economic necessity, have adopted a way of life involving virtually continuous movement in order to ensure their livelihood” (Fauchon, 1983, p. 30). In the present context, they are learners with no geographical ties to the traditional classroom. Analogically, they move continuously to safeguard their intellectual livelihood out of knowledge acquisition necessity. This movement entitles them to the label of nomadic/mobile learners. According to Pieri and Diamantini (2009, p. 548), mobile learning (Mlearning) points to “the distribution of almost any educational content, for example: entire traditional courses or new mini courses, using mobile technologies as Pocket PC, PDA (personal digital assistant), Table PC, e-book, mobile phones, and other portable devices”. M-learning is facilitated by mobile tools, or learners’ mobility (not necessarily with their devices), or content/resources accessibility (regardless of the place)

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(Taylor, 2006). Therefore, it subsumes three foci: The devices, the nomadic learners, and the at hand content. In other words, nomadic learners use mobile devices to take part in their learning activities bringing information and knowledge in conditions and places regardless of location and time (Castillo & Ayala, 2012). From the standpoint of Sharples et al. (2005), M-learning is a ‘coming to know’ process that targets the world in terms of interpretations through a conversation in context happening among learners themselves and with their teachers. It is worth noting that the ‘coming to know’ concept is a type of knowledge—as per Dewey’s reaction to knowledge as ‘to know’ (whereby the knower is a passive spectator of the known thing), that is established upon how men look for and obtain knowledge in real life situations (Dicker, 1973). So, who are these nomadic/mobile learners? At the beginning, the labelling of learners followed one of generations in terms of age-based cohorts who shared experiences, life ones notably, and common standards (Torocsik et al., 2014). The post 1995–2000 natives held different names. For example, Prensky (2001) called them Digital Natives, i.e. digital language native speakers, and contrasted them with Digital Immigrants who are not born digital but embraced facets of the novel technology with their foot in the past. Other designations included Smart Mob (Rheingold, 2002), Screenagers (Rushkoff, 2006), Google Generation (Rowland et al., 2008), and Net Generation (Tapscott, 2009). On the strength of Bennett et al. (2008), scholars agree that these learners have in common their multitasking capacities and technology-based information usage and provision. However, this view faced resistance because it made an extreme age differentiation between the young and the old generations as to technology use (Wheeler & Gerver, 2015). White and Le Cornu (2011) proposed an alternative function-based classification. They suggested that instead of looking at these people in age and generation terms, one has to refer to a continuum ‘Digital Residents-Digital Visitors’ wherein both young and old learners can have a proper position. The two edges point to, respectively, the perception of the web as a network of people producing data individually or collectively and as a set of content supply and management devices. For their part, Gallardo-Echenique et al. (2015)—and in an attempt to solve the dilemma of age generational limits, suggested the label ‘Digital Learners’ (DLs) to target an assemblage of technology conscious learners (not persons). The first wave of digital learners pertaining to Gen Z were natural researchers, self-taught, and politically and culturally passionate entrepreneurs (McKnight, 2018). In other words, they had the necessary skills to do research, learn autonomously and take part in choices related to securing a better future for the world. However, they also needed a set of digital skills, which not only target information in terms of creation and sharing, but also in terms of processing and critical evaluation (Fau & Moreau, 2018). In a study that targeted 220 students, Zubareva (2020) identified their key sociocultural features as academic and technical abilities in addition to digital literacy. Digital literacy means the knowledge embodied in socio-linguistic practices pertaining to digital media and which include technical and reading skills, interaction and communication modes, as well as sharing and understanding the media system

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in terms of constituents of the contemporary world and its social practices (Borges, 2016). This concept expands along a continuum involving aspects like biological and cognitive maturity, favorable socioeconomic environment, updated historical– cultural moments, and interactions with means of being digitalized (Borges, 2016). Thus, digital learning helps improve instructional techniques, spares teachers’ time, and aids in knowledge sharing (Basak et al., 2018).

Generic Space Learning in input space one is a rhizome, whereas learners in space two are nomads. Learning needs learners to take place and learners learn thanks to the process of learning. Thus, learning and learners have shared concepts between the two input spaces. Rhizomatic learning needs to grow and develop making connections and multiplicities in input space one, whereas mobility in waves and tides and communities characterize nomadic learners in input space two. Consequently, movement is also a shared concept between the two input spaces. Finally, short-span occupied locations following needs in both input spaces make the notions of space and needs shared concepts.

Blended Space Learning Theories: Connectivism and e-Social Constructivism Because of growing connectivity, a learner-generated content, and social media, a need for redefining education in a networked world arose (Weller, 2020). Consequently, two theoretical foundations emerged as deemed necessities here: Connectivism and e-social constructivism. Siemens (2005) suggested the concept of connectivism not as a theory but rather as an “integration of principles explored by chaos, network, and complexity and self-organization theories. Learning is a process that occurs within nebulous environments of shifting core elements—not entirely under the control of the individual” (Para. 21). It reflects the nature of the internet itself in the sense that the latter lacks centralization and has multiple nodes as well as a fluctuating nature (Weller, 2020). Consequently, it enables nomadic learners to navigate ad hoc. It also mirrors the notion of rhizome in its heutagogical and paragogical dimensions. In other words, it encompasses a self-determined (in) formal education, which targets meta-learning (Hase & Kenyon, 2007; cited in Wheeler & Gerver, 2015), and the learners as co-builders of their educational content (Cornelli & Danoff, 2011; cited in Wheeler & Gerver, 2015). As to e-social constructivism, it proposes that learning takes place because of an important interaction with content, content experts—be they teachers, authorities

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or skilled specialists—and peers, and is backed in electronic and face-to-face settings that encourage social exchange and exploration by both people and groups (Salmons, 2019). This presupposes that a high amount of collaboration happens among learners and teachers as well as learners and learners. Indeed, collaborative activities enable learners to conquer, exchange, and create novel knowledge with collaborators bearing in mind those prior experiences and contexts (cultural, institutional or historical) that impact individual and group achievement (Salmons, 2019). Therefore, the construction of meanings occurs due to prior knowledge activation, knowledge attainment, sharing, and innovation. All these processes happen in digital contexts and go hand in hand with the principle of nomadic learning wherein content is available to mobile learners who are linked via the network and residing in virtual communities. They also support the concept of rhizomatic learning in its multiplicity principle.

Postdigital: Growth, Movement, and Liquid Spaces Recently, educationists have taken a step ahead and moved the era of digital learning to a new conceptual level: Postdigital learning. According to Cramer (2014), ‘Postdigital’ designates a current disillusionment with digital information systems and media devices, or an epoch wherein people’s enchantment with these systems and gadgets has become historical. Rather than being a chronological development of the digital, the postdigital is “a critical attitude (or philosophy) that inquiries into the digital world, examining and critiquing its constitution, its theoretical orientation and its consequences” (Peters & Besley, 2019, p. 30). In other words, it seeks to evaluate the digital rush for technology in education and which largely prioritized the tools over the content and the content makers. Indeed and as stated by Jandric et al. (2019), despite the somewhat exaggerated machine learning era profits, there still remains a need to discuss the goals and functioning of human learning. Concisely: The scary-sounding term ‘postdigital’ is, at one level, a straightforward concept: the digital is not separate from the physical and social (e.g. in digital education, we still learn in the physical world). Yet this simple insight can be extrapolated to insights that powerfully inform curriculum design and teaching. First, it helps us recognise that technology cannot determine learning or student experience. Second, it highlights the importance of integrating technology into existing cultures and practices. Third, it shows that teaching and learning are not bounded by classrooms or computers. All teaching, face-to-face, online, or blended, is influenced by digital technology (whether directly used in teaching or not) and physical and social spaces (whether on campus or in the local settings of online students) (Fawns et al., 2020, Session information).

So, where does this put nomadic learners? They are still digital in the sense of existing as network nomads living in digital communities. However, they are also subject to the postdigital debate, which denotes ‘ungraspability’ in relation to shortspan inhabited positions and spaces because of the constant transformation happening in political systems, cultures, languages, and technologies (Savin-Baden, 2021). In fact and as humans, they are “locating in liquid spaces; people are both central to the postdigital and key players in its formulation, interruptions, and (re)creation”

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(Savin-Baden, 2021, p. 4). This idea of ungraspability is also at the heart of rhizomatic learning as it focuses on constant growth and transformation with interruptions and (re)creation.

Connected Communities: Communication, Collaboration, and Autonomy Needs Nomadic learners live in connected communities. These communities expand through the world but consolidate their place-based nature (Evans, 2013). In other words, they go beyond borders and connect the whole globe regardless of languages and cultures; however, they also project already existing local groups on the web. The reason behind the creation, development, and survival of a digital community is the ability of its members to stick together and share their experiences and thoughts owing to their need and capacity to communicate and collaborate. The communication aspect happens through language in its transactional (information delivery) and interactional (social relationship sustainability) dimensions (Brown & Yule, 1983). Therefore, a language for nomadic learners is undeniably an informative system for content exchange, and a means for social interaction establishment and nurturing. However, if the informative facet of the content mirrors the traditional concepts and themes of any learning course, the interactional dimension never ceases to differ and transform. The more technology takes steps forward, the more the language used will differ from the traditional classroom one in terms of non-standard features (Veszelski, 2017). It reached the class of variety with Crystal (2001, 2008; cited in Veszelski, 2017) who called it ‘netspeak’, ‘textese’, ‘slanguage’, ‘new high-tech lingo’, and ‘hybrid shorthand’. For his part, Veszelski (2017) made up the term ‘digilect’, which is a variety of language used in groups (sociolect) and facilitated by technology tools (mediolect). The digilect includes “e-mails, posts and comments on internet forums, blog and vlog posts, tweets, online chat texts, posts, and related comments on the message wall of social networking websites” (Veszelski, 2017, p. 29). It is important to note that what is happening today presages further developments for the digilect, especially since communication is transmuting again with the ‘Metaverse’ phenomenon of Facebook and its 3D spaces that “will let you socialize, learn, collaborate and play in ways that go beyond what we can imagine” (Zuckerberg, 2022). In addition to communication requirements, nomadic learners need also to learn how to collaborate. Collaborative learning enables learners to specify their personal approaches to role-taking processes for task organization, coordination, and implementation in comparison with cooperative learning, which leans on learners’ group work guided by teachers (Salmons, 2019). Collaborative learning requires four types of knowledge as per the collaborative knowledge-learning model: 1. Knowledge co-creation refers to the collaborative generation of new knowledge, solutions, or practices.

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2. Knowledge acquisition describes learning that takes place when people come together to acquire new skills or knowledge that none of the participants had prior to the collaboration. 3. Knowledge transfer describes ways we learn from a partner by sharing our expertise or knowledge. 4. Knowledge exchange describes learning that occurs when we share information and resources with another person (Salmons, 2019, pp. 6–7).

Thus, collaboration happens in terms of processes that enable learners to co-create, acquire, transfer and exchange content, skills, and resources. As embodied in Fig. 7.2, these processes target learners’ reflection, dialogue, and mutual review critique and are sustained by three levels of collaboration, namely, parallel, sequential, and synergetic (Salmons, 2019). Learners first reflect on what they already have as knowledge, attitudes, and skills in preparation for collaboration. Second, they share their assets with their groups for the sake of aligning their expectations with the group’s plans and strategies. Third, they negotiate the integration of their work with the group members’ perspectives Fig. 7.2 Taxonomy of collaboration (Salmons, 2019, p. 13)

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through mutual critique. As to collaboration levels and in the parallel stage, learners combine their different ideas made separately. In the sequential stage, they build on each other’s ideas. Finally, synergetic collaboration targets the synthesis of all ideas in a final product. Combining the above processes and collaboration levels, and adding a trust continuum to them makes the taxonomy of collaboration. The latter works perfectly in online contexts as it adjusts to the participants’ expertise with technology, leadership, decision-making, and online coordination as well as the level of existing rapport and confidence among the community members (Salmons, 2019). Communication and collaboration as inevitabilities for connected communities rely heavily on the postdigital learners’ capacity to be autonomous. In fact, learning autonomy with its self-management and self-determination facets (Candy, 1991) paves the way for communication and collaboration in these nomadic communities. In other words, nomadic learners in a rhizomatic context must be ready to learn and control their learning process. Two other dimensions for learner autonomy are of equal importance: The semiotic dimension whereby modern communication features on the net are triggered, and the economic dimension whereby learners are free to choose online learning courses following their granted value (Bouchard, 2012).

Towards a Rhizomatic Thinking The above framework acknowledges the importance of rhizomatic learning in the sense that it challenges knowledge acquisition as per the positivist and arborescent approaches. Indeed, learning no longer happen in terms of individual efforts to absorb content. It takes place as a network wherein the individual interacts with others in a sort of a ‘take and give’ expansion frame. By nurturing knowledge instead of delivering it, the concept of learning as a rhizome helps educational participants involve individuals, assets, practices, and contexts. It also opens doors wide for creativity in an everlasting manner as it propels both teachers and learners towards growing beyond the existing resources. The rhizomatic conception of learning allows educationists to follow and keep up with the developments that happen continuously and rapidly in the digital spheres and populations of learners wherein “studying what is would be a fruitless endeavor. By the time one has decided what it is, it would have become something else” (Strom & Martin, 2017, p. 7). It helps the participants stay away from traditional rigid rubric-based curriculum that do not allow enough freedom to discover, interact with, correct, link, and conceptualize knowledge. Actually, the curriculum is “constructed and negotiated in real time by the contributions of those engaged in the learning process” (Cormier, 2008, p. 5). Through communication, collaboration, and autonomy, learners explore the unknown, deepen their knowledge about it, and adapt it in contact with others based on an equal footing dialogue that strengthens and motivates them.

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Because the rhizome constitutes the nomad’s pathway (Wray, 1998), it is inevitable that rhizomatic learning affects teachers and researchers in terms of nomad thinking. Rhizomatic/nomadic thought is characterized by fluidity, unpredictability, multiplicity, probability, and connection (Sherman, 2020). In other words, the main concern of teachers and researchers should be processes not states and becoming not being (Strom & Martin, 2017) as their classrooms are now perceived as sets of amassed humans and non-humans whose associations and functions define them as part of an assemblage (Strom & Martin, 2017). Assemblages are gatherings of humans and components of the physical world up to and including technology. Like nomadic tribes, they keep moving ahead and changing boundaries. Within this frame, “territorialization can be considered the enduring of these boundaries, an ongoing preservation of the configuration. Deterritorialization is the collapse or reconfiguration of these boundaries to include new elements, exclude old ones, or rearrange existing relations” (Sherman, 2020, p. 377). So, like nomads, teachers and learners should not worry about the arrival or departure of an element in the assemblage. Unlike, the arborescent linear hierarchy wherein every step depends on a preceding one and paves the way for a coming one, the assemblage/territorialization thinking is very flexible and liquid. It allows contexts to appear as elements in the assemblage interact (Sherman, 2020).

Conclusion This chapter presented a blended metaphor conceptual framework that combines the notions of learning (as a rhizome) and learners (as nomads). Drawing upon the concepts of Deleuze and Guattari (1980), it attempted to formulate an understanding of the present educational world with all its virtual characteristics. It also attempted to provide an idea about who the present learners are and how they should be learning. Using two input spaces, a generic space, and a blended space, the framework explained the processes by which learning and learners were metaphorically compared to a rhizome for the former and nomads for the latter. Learning, learners, movement, space, and needs were identified as shared elements between the two input spaces (generic space). In the blended space, connectivism and e-social constructivism as learning theories were identified as blended areas of learning. The postdigital item subsumed the growth, movement, and space features. For their part, the connected communities were depicted in terms of communication, collaboration, and autonomy needs and skills. A very interesting and beautiful concept has emerged, namely, ‘liquid space’. If a lot of research has already been done in relation to learning, learners, learning designs, and teachers in the (post)digital era, there remains a real need to understand how these nomad learners meet on the web in these liquid spaces. This is because liquids and fluids are never stable. With too much heat, they turn into gases, evaporate and leave their minerals behind them. With too much cold, they freeze and turn into solids. However and unlike gazes and solids, they espouse the shape of their

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containers. Metaphorically (again), if these liquid spaces constitute the environment for networked learning, then the learners are the atoms that navigate inside them and interact with each other and their container (curriculum and teachers). Therefore, when does learning gasify (fail), when does it solidify (get outdated), and when does it liquefy (succeed)? In addition, to what extent should technology decide our educational goals up to and including the ones in relation to our cultural and social selections? These questions should be the target of future research. Indeed, the focus should now shift to the transaction/interaction mechanisms inside the (post)digital communities themselves and among the (post)digital communities, especially since our next jump is the ‘Metaverse’ and the artificial intelligence with their complex multimodal dimensions.

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Chapter 8

Rhizomatic Learning in the Postmodern Era Tatiana Bokova

Introduction The rate and direction of changes in the modern world are increasingly understood in terms of postmodernism, which significantly impacts all key institutions and spheres of human activity, including education and pedagogical training. Postmodernism tends to impart equivocality to education and influence the educational process’s structure, content, and organizational forms. This finds expression in the rejection of universal theories and the knowledge paradigm, in the transition to plurality and constant updating of the content of education, as well as in the opportunity for the student to make educational choices and for the teacher to adequately assess those choices and the risks accompanying them. The ideas of postmodernism are reflected in the peculiarities of the organization and functioning of modern educational institutions, with adjustment for the peculiarities of the country in which these ideas circulate. The postmodern ideas of “open education” accessible to all and creating conditions for the self-identification of a person and the formation of his or her individuality have been picked up by scientists and education practitioners from many countries. They have been increasingly giving preference to postmodern approaches to the formulation and solution of key issues related to education (and first of all, didactics) in their efforts to achieve better results in conditions of fierce global competition. This preference is historically and socio-culturally conditioned. The process of development of postmodernity concerns teachers, schools, and systems moving from the traditional state to a state in which education becomes comfortable in terms of individual differences, as well as the concept of continuing education, which states that learning occurs throughout the life span of an individual and that a teacher is also a student in this process. T. Bokova (B) Moscow City University, Moscow, Russia e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2023 M. S. Khine (ed.), Rhizome Metaphor, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-19-9056-4_8

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Conceptually, the essence of postmodernism can be expressed through the following terms: eclecticism, deconstruction, multiplicity, otherness, inclusiveness, artistic perception of reality, interdisciplinarity, pluralism, multiculturalism, metanarrative, interactivity, uncertainty, incompleteness, openness, dialogue, doubt, irrationalism, and recognition of the presumption of unconscious individual and collective attitudes. All this is reflected in the variability of the content of education, redistribution of managerial functions, construction of individual learning, etc. Colliding with classical concepts, these approaches generate multidirectional desires: to maintain stability and strengthen control but at the same time to destroy the canons and look for something new. One of the ideologists of postmodernism, J. F. Lyotard, emphasized that postmodernism is a style of thinking that permeates, like a rhizome, all spheres of life, changes a person’s thinking and his or her attitude to other people, creating a whole space of rhizomatic connections (Lyotard, 1994). Rhizome is the key concept of the project of nomadology, and it is directly opposed to the concept of structure as a systematized and hierarchically ordered organization. In his work “Logic of Sense” (Deleuze, 1993), Deleuze proposed a model concept of reality in the form of intercultural and interindividual interactions expressed in the concept of “nomadology”. Nomadology is, on the one hand, a certain concept, a “plan” of reality of interindividual interactions (senses, languages, interpretations, and opinions); on the other hand, it is a certain orientation towards constructing an acentric, discrete, and differentiated interaction space. Thus, nomadology is a model of the worldview, which is built on rhizomaticity and an understanding of reality as an unstructured whole. Rhizomaticity (from Fr. rhizome) is currently understood outside of biological sciences in different ways, depending on the researcher’s viewpoint: it can be a characteristic, a way of thinking, a concept of knowledge, a model of society, an attitude, or a strategy. Speaking about types of labyrinths, U. Eco notes: “The rhizome is so arranged that each path in it has the opportunity to intersect with another one. There is no center, no periphery, no exit. Potentially, such a structure is limitless” (Eco, 2007, p. 205). At the same time, it is important to understand that a rhizomatic structure per se is conditional and limitless since it expresses the fundamental for the pedagogical reality of postmodernity drive to the presumption of destruction of the traditional idea of education as a centered and stably defined structure. This perspective allows us to identify an alternative that is radically opposed to the closed and static linear structures presupposing a rigid axial orientation. It should be noted that the principle of rhizomaticity manifests itself in several basic characteristics of the postmodern era education, which are important as far as they set new contours for constructing, describing, and explaining reality in general and pedagogical reality in particular. Let us consider some of these characteristics.

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Decentralization is the absence of an identifiable structural centre. It is important that postmodernist ideas set the vector of decentralization of society, which can be described as the desire to rhizomatize any social process, including the process of education. Just like society, education is inevitably decentralized. The rhizome is directly opposed to the concept of the structure as a systematized and hierarchically ordered organization. The introduction of this concept into philosophical use reflects the active expansion of the strategy of deconstruction, or, in other words, the recognition of pluralism of meanings (Derrida, 2007). Postmodernism is a radical nonclassical cultural project, which is based on the principle of deconstruction and decentralization of culture as an integral formation. Connectivity and heterogeneity—absence of a centre, clear boundaries, and hierarchy. A social rhizome, like a biological rhizome, is constantly growing, producing new ‘roots’. Joining is carried out in all directions, connecting areas that would seem impossible to connect. Everything is connected, but all the shoots are actually independent, they do not follow any single pattern of growth: any element of the rhizome can (and most probably must) be associated with some other element. What is paradoxical is the fact that a rhizomatic system implies uncertainty, and this is a characteristic that cannot be found in learning in its traditional sense. It is this uncertainty, first of all, that lies behind the secret of uniformity in which hierarchical ordering cannot manifest itself. Multiplicity is, in essence, a continuation (if not a development) of decentralization and heterogeneity. There is no single centre, but there are many nodes and connections, and there is heterogeneity, but there is no hierarchy and differences. Thus, the trick is that the system is reduced to something single, not multiple. It can be understood within the framework of a single multiplicity, a self that for no reason differs from itself, surpasses itself, crosses its boundaries, and constantly changes its shape. Each subject is like a rhizome, there are many subjects, and there are many intersections and exchanges of knowledge and constructs that constantly bring changes, though no longer in the form of pure knowledge and pure achievement, but in the form of mastering and assimilating the connected knowledge that has now become information. The result of learning is measured not by quantitative indicators like ‘how many (units of knowledge, people, etc.)’ or ‘in what time frame’, but by models like ‘I can’ and ‘I am aware of’. If the information received is regarded as useful to society or has practical value, it is considered knowledge. Society thus gets the opportunity to create knowledge outside of a given context and make it a new link in the existing and constantly created chain. Discontinuity—discreteness of the structure. Here, again, we turn to the concept of a rhizome—a rootstalk that can be broken in some place but will resume its development along one of its old lines or along new ones. Each rhizome contains breakage points at which new branches are created, ready

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to break off in their new areas and form new points of various connections. Discreteness is the basis for decentralization, connectivity, multiplicity, and heterogeneity. This characteristic also reveals the general connectedness of all the previously mentioned features, the “branchiness” of the rhizome that manifests itself even in its astructural, placeless organization. Moreover, this feature is closely connected to the next one. Cartography consists of the fact that the rhizome does not fit into any structural model. A rhizome is a map that cannot be reproduced without awareness of close contact with reality. No new rhizome and no new branch is reproduced according to an old scheme, pattern, or template. At the same time, a newly created one can be broken, ignored, adapted to any stage of development, or remade so as to please a certain person, group, or social formation. It can be painted on a wall, and conceived as a work of art; it can be used in political activity or meditation. J. Deleuze and F. Guattari also use the terms deterritorialization and reterritorialization to demonstrate the constant process of change. Deterritorialization is the process of destruction of what has already been done, but this destruction is due to the desire for constant movement. The direction of movement cannot be foreseen; it is based on the need to create, not to destruct. Therefore, the destruction is followed by reterritorialization, which creates new forms and new models with renewed vigor (Holland, 2013). Event-based construction of reality. Reality is an open, deterritorialized space of many different artifacts, including legends, myths, autobiographies and biographies, and personal ideas about history and modernity. This reality is populated by subjects having their own vision of reality, their own goals, and aspirations. This feature can be considered in various examples; let us turn to the world of education. The result of learning should be—and this is the main thing in the postmodernist understanding of education—the ability of the student to impart his own sense to the things he studies. The task of the teacher is to provide conditions in which students can get acquainted with various cultural perspectives and values. In his arsenal, the teacher should always have a set of approaches to democratic decision-making about what the content of the lesson should be like, and how to make the conclusions made in the lesson incomplete and open to other representations and interpretations. Between the teacher and the student, there should be a constant dialogue in the search for truth (Ivanova, 2015). The understanding of learning as a constructed process means that students must create knowledge for themselves, that is, each student constructs meaning individually (and socially). Sense is the conceptual core of learning, but the construction of sense requires constant learning. The task of sense construction is assumed by the teacher. Two essential prerequisites are necessary for sense construction in the learning process: – Firstly, the teacher should focus his or her attention on the student as a subject of learning, and not on the content. Postmodern pedagogy rejects

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the model according to which teaching should be based solely on the body of knowledge offered by the teacher, while the student should passively perceive it. Such a situation rules out the principle of teacher–student hierarchy, according to which the teacher gives the student knowledge “from the top down”, using the method of directives and instructions. This idea originated with C. Rogers (Rogers and Freiberg, 1994), and a detailed description of the role of the teacher–facilitator and of creating a situation of equality in the educational process can be found in the works by Ivanova (2015). – Secondly, we proceed from the assumption that there is no knowledge that would be independent of the cognizing agent. Learning is the personal and social construction of sense from a huge array of personal experiences, which does not have any single order or structure per se. Thus, knowledge and learning are the results of studying the real world that the teacher and the student face, and this world, as is known from the field of psychological sciences, depends on the perceived characteristics of both the teacher and the student (Ivanova and Bokova, 2017). (7)

Rejection of binarism, as the principle that gives reality its structurality and hierarchy, also needs to be considered in connection with learning understood as an equal interaction, the content of which is constantly changing and being restructured. While the modernist model of education implied learning through a rigid hierarchical “teacher–student” system, in which one component (the teacher) was endowed with the presumption of power, postmodernism suggests the destruction of such teacher–student binarism. It is no coincidence that one of the main techniques in postmodernism is overcoming and even intentionally destroying binary oppositions. Thus, the teacher and the student are no longer seen as opposing each other. They are equal components of a single learning process, jointly structuring the interaction space. Any binarism is understood by postmodernists as violence and oppression of a person. According to G. D. Dmitriev, unfair power relations led to the oppression and exploitation of man by man (Dmitriev, 2007). Many postmodernists consider this issue not so much from social and economic positions as from personal and cultural ones, exploring, for example, gender, family, religious, linguistic, and psychological oppression. An example of gender oppression is, for instance, adherence to the stereotype that girls are less capable than boys of studying mathematics and physics. Being ‘oppressed’ by the teacher through the language of communication (statements like ‘you’re dumb’, ‘you can’t understand simple things’ can often be heard at school, followed by the corresponding negative emotions), students may manifest indecision and timidity, get depressed, and lose faith in themselves. Postmodernists see their task in helping the student to free himself from the forces that dominate him, to reveal his capabilities and abilities, and eventually to realize his potential, as well as in helping the teacher to understand that his activity can either free the student from oppression and selfoppression or strengthen them. Cultural baggage distorts reality and imposes an

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extremely limited set of perspectives on a person. Any form of open imposition is perceived by postmodernists as an environment of violence. Thus, one of the most prominent postmodernists J. Derrida writes that violence is a necessary environment of education as part of culture, since any education presupposes identification of the non-identical, that is, collision of two unequal positions—those of the teacher and the student. Only in the process of language communication is it possible to level such differences, thus reality is an open pantextual environment. Moreover, a language environment is not merely an environment of words that mean something; it is, first of all, an environment of meanings that prescribe rules of behaviour to active agents of interaction—the student and the teacher. Thus, language mixing and unification promote a polyvariant dialogue between the student and the teacher. At the same time, a problem arises which is of particular importance for education—that of representation and interpretation of the information which links the teacher and the student in communication (Gubman, 2013). Just as there is no identifiable centre in the rhizome, so there is no person as an object in the rhizomatic educational environment. The educational environment conveys a multivariate model of knowledge that is continuously constructed during the interaction, which creates a fairly dynamic learning environment. In such an environment, the student cannot be an object for the teacher; he becomes an equal agent of narrative interaction, participating in the process of cognition together with the teacher. The teacher becomes not an authority producing knowledge but a moderator, a mediator, and a facilitator, who creates conditions for the successful acquisition, interpretation, and assimilation of new knowledge. We should recall M. Foucault, who stated that the idea of a person as an object of pedagogic research is a delusion. By making man their object, pedagogical sciences, as well as human sciences in general, according to M. Foucault, ‘dissolve’ man, lose track of him, since man as an object is not inside the interaction, but is, as it were, taken out of it (Foucault, 1999, p. 479). According to G. Deleuze, any oppositions (man−woman, teacher−student, past−future) shape reality into frozen forms, as if ‘blocking’ the active space where it could be sculpted by many participants. Reality as a space of interactions is always intersubjective since sense itself is the connection point of a variety of other senses that exist here and now (Deleuze, 1993). To explain this, postmodernists introduce the notion of concept. In this context, the concept is understood as a personal act of ‘grasping’ senses from the textual reality of interaction. Reality consists of a multiplicity of points of ‘senses’ which are correlated with other senses and are constantly born from each other, thus giving reality its ‘volume’, or ‘surface’. This is a kind of microenvironment, in which the same senses are born in interaction between individuals; in other words, it is a space of understanding. A concept is an instantaneous event, a kind of singularity that is born in the space of infinite interactions and cannot be constant since it is not linked to any signifiers (signs, people, body, etc.). Interacting with each other, concepts form a certain

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‘event horizon’ or ‘desert of the real’ (according to the famous statement by R. Barthes), which in itself does not mean anything, but is meaningful in its interpretations. Reality is an infinitely reproduced history of events in which specific people’s points of view and interpretations are meaningful. Reality as a whole does not exist objectively (outside) but in the minds of those who perceive it. Thus, no version of reality can claim to be completely objective, because all the versions are created by man. Postmodern concepts overemphasize the role of the subject in cognition, attach special importance to the ability of the subject to interpret the world, build his or her own knowledge, and attach his or her own meaning to phenomena and events, regardless of what others think about them. Let us take the vivid example of different approaches to the study of history. For example, in modernism, history is usually considered as something remote in time and space, while in postmodernism, an interpretation-based teaching method is employed: students are supposed to learn to interpret historical events in such a way as if they were their participants. This gives rise to two approaches to studying and understanding history: adherents to the first one proceed from the positions of logical positivism and analytical philosophy, and defend the chronological study of history, while adherents to the second one are for its existentialist rendition in the form of a multi-discursive interpretation depending on cultural, scientific, and other ideas, as well as the person’s own experience. An analogue of rhizomatic reality, as it has already been mentioned above, is the concept of narrative, the use of which, in our opinion, gives an understanding of the principles of the rhizomatic learning system. The term narrative points to the processual nature and the constant reproduction of textual, linguistic reality. The constant reproduction of texts and language structures does not affect the reality and the subjects themselves; it only organizes some symbolic activity between them and creates a space of playful, creative interaction. Any interactions between subjects ‘close’ into hypertext, which constitutes the game space of the language (space of language-games, according to L. Wittgenstein). It is flexible dynamic co-creation through linguistic influences and manipulation with the help of language. A narrative is a space of concepts, a kind of sign system that influences the subjects of interaction, for example, for the purpose of manipulation. If we apply narrative discourse to pedagogical communication based on the triad ‘teacher–learning material–student’, then the narrative appears as the most important ‘teaching tool’ in each of the elements (Bukharov, 2011). The teacher acts as the ‘transmitter’ or the creator of the narrative. In the latter case, he or she can use stories from personal experience, achieving a double effect: (1) giving a vivid illustration of the topic being studied, thus making it understandable; (2) qualitatively changing the relationship with students, which is facilitated by the transformation of the narrator into the main character of the narrative and by the emergence of a personal perspective. Educational material of almost any discipline includes its history, an overview of the current state, biographies of major scientists, and the history of their discoveries. When the teacher observes

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the balance between generalizations and details and manages to find his or her own analogies and connections, the rule of structuring of narrative emerges selection of facts and their organization into ‘episodes of the story’. With such a balance of generalization (objectification) and detailing (individual evaluation component), the purpose of the message is achieved—a holistic image of the phenomenon is created. Students, building a narrative on the topic of their research (project), consciously gain new knowledge, thus developing cognitive abilities, and, at the same time, unconsciously gain group narrative identity (communication skills). Thus, the narrative project acts as an endless reproduction of statements that only point to something without saying anything about it and fix the processal nature of self-realization as a way of existence of a narrative (or, according to R. Barthes, ‘communicating’) text. Here it is important to turn to metanarrative. By metanarrative, J. Lyotard understands the principle of constructing historical or other narrative events in a certain structural sequence (Lyotard, 1994). Therefore, according to postmodern ideas, it is necessary to get out of such metanarratives since any of them limits thinking. Thus, in 1976, the American writer R. Federman published the novel ‘At your discretion’, which the reader can read from any place, shuffling through its unnumbered and unbound pages. Such aleatoric literature soon became computer-based; it can only be read on the display: just press a key—and you are transferred to the hero’s prehistory; press another one—and you change the bad ending to a good one, or vice versa (Rudnev, 1997). Individualization and humanization of the educational process are a reflection of the specific circumstances and conditions in which the educational process adapted to reality and to the student’s experience takes place. In this sense, it is not the end result that is important in the educational environment but the process itself. The teacher must have the ability to find an individual approach to every student, be ready to embrace ideas concerning the humanization of education associated with the postmodern era and take into account the features of postmodernism which were mentioned above. Many new things which are obligatory for implementation in teaching cannot be taught in the framework of the traditional technology of teacher training; the problem of professional development goes beyond the mere acquisition of new skills or knowledge by teachers.

It should, first of all, be pointed out that postmodern pedagogy rejects the word theory and replaces it with the word theorizing. Any theory is regarded as a finished product and is dealt with by theorists—as a rule, university professors, need to give students clear, complete definitions of terms so that their knowledge can be tested during the exam. Theorizing, on the other hand, excludes the dominance of one discourse, narrative, or method of interpretation of the content of education or its individual parts. Furthermore, the postmodern education project focuses on the use of knowledge for practical purposes as a guarantee of success. Knowledge, ideas, and language

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are created by people, and not because they are ‘true’, but rather because they are useful. Truth does not exist, or it is unknowable. Truth is considered in relation to culture. For example, school textbooks, when describing the American Creed, which includes God-given rights to life, liberty, and property, often assume that these rights may be true for Americans, but people in other countries and cultures see them quite differently. This point of view reflects the profound influence of postmodernist ideas on today’s education system. Postmodernists, following structuralists, believe that the truth is determined by each individual culture independently. Truth is relative, not universal. Postmodernists replace the word truth with words such as perspectives, constructs, or viewpoints. Thus, they say: the best thing we can do is to describe how different groups perceive the world, but we cannot assume that it really is true. Postmodernism is largely a result of Darwinian evolution, because Darwinism destroys the basis of knowledge. Darwinism is the belief that everything that exists consists of nature, plus time, and plus chances. This means that our ideas, our confidence in their accuracy included, consist of nature, plus time, and plus chances. For example, Americans drew one map by accident, South Africans drew it differently; as a result, both cultures see the same thing differently, but neither point of view can be considered better or more truthful than the other. Thus, postmodernism is based on the assumption that what people consider knowledge actually consists of ‘constructs’ (world views), and not of ‘truth’. The basic idea is that all knowledge is invented, or ‘created’, in the minds of people. Knowledge has not been found, as modernists claim. In other words, teachers teach, and students learn on the basis of knowledge constructions created by people. An important feature of this experimental, relativistic (pragmatic) concept of knowledge is the equal value of knowledge created by the student, the teacher, or the scientists. In these conditions, the creation of a favourable learning environment is encouraged, where students can improve their own knowledge. Teachers in such cases say that it is necessary to become a ‘teacher of the future’, and not to be a ‘sage on the stage’. So, what is the content of education for postmodernists? If we appeal to the original ancient Greek meaning of the word curriculum (currere—‘course, direction’), then the content of education is supposed to guide the student. The American researcher W. Pinar suggests that this term can be considered as a synonym for curriculum, as it is the result of a rethinking of educational experience, and therefore, can often be changed: “Currere is an ongoing project of self-understanding in which one becomes mobilized for engaged pedagogical action as an intellectual” (Pinar 2004, p. 4). At the same time, the curriculum should always reflect life experience, using ideas from the past, present, and future to create a living and changing, and therefore, adapted to various innovations and educational environments. The content of education should focus on the student’s personal experience, and not on external learning goals. Goals may appear during the learning process. At the same time, it is the student who has the right to put them forward first, and not the teacher, who only offers his or her options for joint consideration in the course of dialogue and negotiations. Just like J. Dewey in the early twentieth century (Dewey, 1916; Rogacheva, 2006), postmodernists choose to experience as the source

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of educational content. For J. Kincheloe, the postmodern vision of education is based on what he calls ‘post-formal thinking’, the main feature of which is ‘production of one’s own knowledge’ (Kincheloe and Steinberg 1999). A teacher with post-formal thinking helps students not to reproduce someone else’s knowledge but to produce their own; to reinterpret their life, discover new opportunities and talents in themselves, and realize their potential; to see the connection between absolutely opposite things (he calls that metamorphic cognition); to connect the logical and the emotional in learning; to consider facts not in isolation but as part of the general; to develop empathy; to contextualize the content of education; to understand the interaction between the specific and the general; to go beyond the boundaries of a simplified understanding of cause-and-effect relationships; to view the world as a text that needs to be interpreted, not explained; to establish links between the mind and the ecosystem. Thus, postmodernism invites teachers to abandon their ‘conditioned response to the content of education’ (in Slattery’s terminology (2013) as a set of general and specific goals, lesson plans, and learning outcomes, and look at it as something vague, aesthetic, autobiographical, intuitive, eclectic, and mystical. Postmodern education has no predetermined general goals and standards, let alone behavioristic specific objectives, or expected learning outcomes. It sees the content of education as something constantly (at each lesson, if necessary) updated, emerging, growing, and changing. In accordance with the postmodern mindset, the goal of education shifts from teaching academic knowledge and skills to providing a learning environment where students create their own knowledge. Teachers learn through reading and reflection (just like students), observing students’ work, collaborating with other teachers, and sharing experiences. Such training allows teachers to succeed in practice because, in addition to a powerful base of theoretical knowledge, it is based on the real problems of teachers. The modern world is undergoing social, economic, political, and cultural transformations. The social geography of the postmodern era is the only place where roles are becoming less divided, and boundaries are becoming more irrelevant (‘what was “there” is now ‘here’). This has serious consequences for teachers and school administrators. It is not only the social geography of school education that is changing, which leads to the blurring of boundaries between schools and the outside world (working with parents and with different communities and institutions), but also vocational training (increasingly expanding access to networks), the content of which is becoming wider and deeper. According to postmodernism, there is no place for officials in an educational institution. The principal must not sit at the top of a hierarchy that does not really exist. “Postmodernity rejects the idea of differentiation based on order and hierarchy” (English, 2003, p. 42). The structure of an educational organization is supposed to be oval-shaped, with the student being the focus of attention of the stakeholders (the principal, the associate principal and the assistant principal, the heads of departments, counsellors, teachers, and all other staff) and serving as the centre of education.

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The first segment of the oval includes the teachers because they are with the students on a daily basis, they know their needs and maintain their success. The next segment of the oval includes the associate principal, the assistant principal, the department heads, counsellors, and teachers. In traditional school practice, this is known as division and specialization of labour, which means separation of functions. The division of labour was designed to produce specialization so that each employee should know their duties. The principal has always been regarded as the head, but this position has been misinterpreted. The associate and assistant principals usually have their distinct roles and are responsible for specific levels of the system. Department heads have a direct influence on the quality of learning within a subject area, while teachers are responsible for planning the learning. “Postmodernists reject such claims as preposterous, asserting that what the conflict represents is merely a façade” (English, 2003, p. 9). The influence of postmodernism has affected teachers and schools that have begun to move from the traditional state (let us call it that) to the search for a new one, namely, to the desire to make the educational process and the student’s time at school comfortable, and to individualize learning based on individual differences, needs, and abilities. The concept of continuing education has also begun to be implemented, which states that learning continues throughout the life of an individual and that the teacher is also a student in this process. Assimilating the ideas of the postmodern era, teachers are increasingly seeing their task in moving in the learning process from influence (and hence suppression) to interaction, thus helping students to free themselves from the forces dominating them, to reveal their capabilities and abilities, and to ultimately realize their full potential. Postmodernism calls for abandoning traditional teaching methods and laying down the principles of the rhizomatic model of culture and education. The purpose of education in this case is to show a young person the path of knowledge, to form an interdisciplinary vision of the world, and not to fill his or her consciousness with specific knowledge and skills. The principles of postmodernism have found their application in certain strategies of the organization of the educational process, which will be investigated in subsequent studies.

Rhizomatic Learning For a vivid representation of the impact of postmodernist ideas on education, let us turn to the rhizomatic model of learning as a condition for creating a polymorphic educational environment based on the principle of networked learning implying constant construction and multiplicity of interaction subjects, in which the traditional category of ‘structure’ is replaced by an astructural and nonlinear way of organizing educational space, leaving the possibility for immanent mobility (Cormier, 2008). Any phenomenon or event created in such a space becomes associated with other events, points to them, and, in a certain sense, informs about all changes.

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Thus, rhizomatic learning offers, on the one hand, an approach to learning in which any of its agents, being connected with everyone else, can solve their own problems, and create their own programs—not in a certain structural order, but depending on the interests of students and their parents. On the other hand, the students, and their parents themselves actively participate in the rhizomatic learning model, since they have the right to choose their own path in such a system, starting from education programs and ending with payment methods. The rhizomatic model of learning set a certain coordinate system in which schools possessing the following characteristics began to develop. Polyvariance of learning. The undoubted advantage is that parents have the right to decide which school their children will go to, regardless of their income level. The program demonstrates the content of knowledge that each student will receive as an opportunity to study subjects beyond the scope of the state school system. Schools also give parents and students the opportunity to choose a school based on the student’s interests. It is important to note that only in conditions of polyvariance is it possible to ‘train’ one’s mind to think at the junction of different language zones—different disciplines. In the process of mastering the content of the subjects, the student learns to think discursively, to see the context of learning, and at the same time to acquire learning skills. In other words, education becomes a structure of identification of a person in society, an indicator of his or her skills, which are socially significant because they are the result of his or her personal free choice. Polyvariance is also manifested in regard to school time. In Russia, the principle of polyvariance of education is most often implemented in private schools. Multiplicity of choice, connectivity, and heterogeneity of parts of the whole. An important point is that Russian schoolchildren’s learning is based on interests in school topics; they focus on a specific topic and a coordinated program in one of the various fields of science, technology, engineering, mathematics, fine and performing arts, international studies, world languages (with or without immersion in the language environment), criminal law, environmental protection, and many others. Here are some examples. The Jacques-Yves Cousteau School in St. Petersburg is distinguished not only by its deep study of the French language, but also by its courses in the geography of France, French literature, and business French. The school has an international exchange program, and every year St. Petersburg receives lyceum students from Paris and Marseille. The school’s theatrical productions in French receive well-deserved awards on Russian and international stages. The Perspektiva school in Moscow was established as an elite game-based learning school. For better assimilation, various subjects are combined into one course—a ‘package’ of history, geography, and literature. Then, a game is invented, in which the whole school is immersed for one week. If they eat with chopsticks in the dining room and drink tea sitting on mats in the classroom, it means that the history and culture of Japan are being studied; and if teachers and students express their thoughts using figures of classical rhetoric in each lesson, it means that they are studying ancient eloquence. Classes consist of about ten students, and exams are held every six months. From time to time, studies move out of town, to boarding houses. Every

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year, a ‘Big Game’ takes place: a castle, villages of six or seven houses, and a city with streets appear in the countryside near Moscow. For four days, the students live in another, almost virtual, world, where peasants cultivate fields, artisans make weapons, merchants sell goods, and robbers attack them. Moscow International Film School No. 1318 was established based on the film studio of the Palace of Pioneers on the Sparrow Hills. Here, children receive not only a certificate but also initial vocational training. In total, about one hundred children study at the school, and there is a clear division into classes and workshops: director, screenwriter, cameraman, actor, sound engineer, and animator. Children study full-time; the first half of their school day is occupied by compulsory subjects, while the second half consists of creative workshops. High school students create films, plays, and TV shows, and they choose the most pressing issues as their topics: refugees forgotten in extinct villages, disabled children, juvenile prisoners, abandoned old people, HIV-infected people, etc. Students visit colonies, boarding schools, and nursing homes. There are also expeditions to various places in Russia and abroad: the school has partners in joint projects in Canada, Japan, South Korea, and Thailand. Students are admitted to grades 8–10. The Slavic-American school ‘Marina’ has two parallel programs—Russian and American, and children are taught in two languages at once. The training is divided into three stages. From the first to the fourth grade, the children study the program of the Russian primary school. At the same time, they taught English and basic subjects in the American school. From the fourth grade, a second foreign language (German or French) is added. At the same time, teaching in English begins with social studies, geography, history, and literature of the UK/ USA. The third stage is high school, where the students are prepared for international tests: TOEFL, SAT/PSAT, GCSE, and CET. The school boasts the only serious school studio staging musicals in English in the capital. Marina cooperates with the Californian Children’s Musical Theater, organizes exchanges and study trips abroad to the UK, Ireland, Holland, Belgium, Germany, Austria, and other countries. In our opinion, the variability of subjects is justified and necessary, but only at the senior stage, after comprehending a course of basic knowledge. It is important that there should be no devaluation of grades here. Greater freedom is also observed in modern schools in the choice of teaching methods. This is indicative of a postmodern orientation to the event-based construction of the educational process, which takes into account the real needs and demands of the students themselves. The narrow and individualized learning environment in schools corresponds to the principle of deconstruction, which ensures the orientation of learning to a specific environment (to a group of persons—subjects of this environment). The presence of narrow educational environments ensures the construction of a type of community-based on the “student—internal environment” system, in which everyone can express themselves in the narrow space of interpersonal interactions and observe their contribution and participation in this process. Unfortunately, a narrow and individualized learning environment that can be created with a small number of students is possible only in individual Russian schools, due to a lack of places and funding. Therefore, it is difficult to talk about ensuring great attention to each student on the

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part of teachers and about the possibility of constructing a type of community-based on the ‘student–internal environment’ system. We can only hope that every year there will be more schools, and approach to each student will become more personality oriented. The next characteristic of rhizomatic learning is the decentralization of learning, which implies the active inclusion of additional agents in the educational process. Thus, many schools can boast of greater involvement of parents and public organizations, greater individualization through teaching based on specific topics, and specialized programs, which creates the spirit of a unified community and leads to the creation of a more favourable atmosphere for the implementation of the educational process. Every teacher is qualified in the field they teach in, and at the same time, they have a narrow specialization due to training concentrating on the specific topic and on professional development. Moreover, not only do many schools form the content of a multivariate environment, but they are themselves part of this environment. They are closely connected with the existing state standards and with private business communities, and they actively cooperate with cultural facilities (museums, for instance). The principles of rhizomatic learning are also correlated with the enculturation of the environment, that is, inclusion in it of a multitude of subjects that bring difference and at the same time function as a single whole in accordance with the principle of ‘unity in diversity.’ Enculturation of the environment correlates with the ideas of postmodernism. Undoubtedly, nationality-related problems may arise in Russian schools, but they are not of a mass nature, as in many other countries, and do not provoke strikes in schools or suspension of classes. There are many multinational schools, and one of them is the first multicultural school No. 1650 in Moscow, where children of thirty-two nationalities study: Belarusians, Russians, Jews, Armenians, Abkhazians, Koreans, Latvians, Germans, Gypsies, Greeks, Bashkirs, etc. Children can study both their own national traditions and the traditions of other nations. Russian is taught here as a foreign language. Students choose their own group and hence the language, literature, and history that they study. In addition, the schedule includes ethnology, cultural studies, ethics, and etiquette of the people of the world. Rejection of binarism. As has been repeatedly noted, postmodernism moves away from the perception of the teacher as an authority. The teacher becomes an active participant in the learning process, a learner and creator of his or her own spontaneous forms of learning. All this is impossible without strict requirements for the qualifications of the teacher. Such requirements are actively established in charter schools. The rejection of binarism is also evident in Russian schools; the perception of the teacher as an authority is a thing of the past—and this is a direct influence of the ideas of postmodernism on education. A teacher, as an active participant in the learning process and a learner, must have high-level qualifications in the subject as well as psychological and pedagogical training in order to be interesting as a person, to be able to share knowledge and receive it from students, and to show flexibility in solving problems that may arise. It seems to us that Russian school teachers are

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ready for this role, despite the fact that it is complex and unpredictable, and that it requires willpower, energy, and desire to learn, to have the right to make mistakes, and not to be afraid to listen to a negative assessment of the methodology of your work.

Conclusion Modern education is a complex multifunctional system, the development, and comprehension of which is largely possible thanks to postmodernism as a worldview and a spiritual, intellectual, and mental phenomenon of a global scale. The influence of postmodernism on all key spheres of human activity in general and on education and pedagogical activity, in particular, has turned out to be so strong and diverse that any study of this phenomenon requires an adjustment for the specifics of the particular country. The study showed that modern schools prefer the rhizomatic model of education, which turns education into a field for experiments that include unstructured integrated learning, building an educational environment as a creative community, and relying on social interaction involving various social forces. Moreover, a teacher in an alternative school is not just an active participant in the learning process but also a learner and a creator of his or her own spontaneous forms of learning.

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Ivanova, S. V. (2015). Didactic concept in the postmodern era. Values and Meanings, 3(37), 6–13. Ivanova, S. V., Bokova, T. N. (2017). Postmodern ideas’ influence on education (illustrated by the USA experience). In International Conference Education Environment for the Information Age (EEIA-2017) (pp. 339−355). Moscow, Russia, June 7−8. https://doi.org/10.15405/epsbs.2017. 08.41. Kincheloe, J. L., Steinberg, S. R. (1999). A tentative description of post-formal thinking: The critical confrontation with cognitive theory. The post-formal reader: Cognition and education, pp. 55−90. Liotard, J.-F. (1994). The answer to the question: what is postmodern? Ad Marginem, 93, 307–323. Pinar, W. (2004). What is curriculum theory? (Studies in curriculum theory). Lawrence Erlbaum Associates Publishers. Rogacheva, E. Y. (2006). The influence of John Dewey’s pedagogy on the theory and practice of education in the XX century (358). Doctoral Dissertation, Moscow. Rogers, C., Freiberg, J. H. (1994). Freedom to learn. Merill. Rudnev, V. P. (1997). Dictionary of culture of XX century (Vol. 384). Moscow. Slattery, P. (2013). Curriculum development in the postmodern era. Teaching and learning in an age of accountability (pp. 20−21). Routledge. Taylor and Francis.

Chapter 9

Rhizomatic Learning Environments: Possibilities for Education Jeong Cir Deborah Zaduski, Klaus Schlünzen Junior, Daniela Melaré Vieira Barros, and Elisa Tomoe Moriya Schlünzen

Theoretical Background of the Research During 2017 and 2020, an online training program for educators was developed in partnership with two educational institutions, one in São Paulo, Brazil, and one in Florida, United States, helping participants to reflect on their mindsets, improve their praxis, and establish inclusive pedagogical practices. The idea was born from the partnership established between two educational institutions that have personnel who believe that inclusive education is an essential topic and despite all the problems that many institutions already face, it should be taken seriously. Personally, the idea became significant when seeing the work carried out in Brazil by the Center for the Promotion of Digital, Educational, and Social Inclusion (CPIDES). The organization has a 22-year history of developing educational activities, conducting research, and community outreach directed at individuals with disabilities through digital, social, and educational strategies. In April 2010, the CPIDES office was opened. With an area of 373 square meters, it supports people with disabilities focusing on their educational and social development, generating literacy and schooling strategies, preparing them for employment, and helping them to achieve personal development. The experience gained through these activities has led to the generation of theoretical and practical data, which is used to design both face-to-face and online training programs to help educators throughout Brazil. The Institution also uses digital technology to develop products and processes that support teaching, human resources, and the use of the digital infrastructure. In addition to offering training courses in J. C. D. Zaduski (B) · K. S. Junior · E. T. M. Schlünzen São Paulo State University, São Paulo, Brazil e-mail: [email protected] D. M. V. Barros Open University, São Paulo, Brazil © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2023 M. S. Khine (ed.), Rhizome Metaphor, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-19-9056-4_9

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distance learning to educators and other professionals, researchers and partners have conducted workshops for public school teachers, given community lectures, and participated in various discussion venues in Brazil and abroad. Accessibility and inclusion in education can be a tough argument to be addressed, mainly because it is hard to find patterns, and fit in the arborescent, hierarchical, and categorized patterns that are present in schools, universities, and educational spaces around the world. Nonetheless, educational institutions face great social and regulatory pressure to ensure that all students have access to places and educational materials that are accessible also to students with disabilities. In spite of the existing regulations and all the tension created by governors and policy-makers, teachers simply do not have the resources to ensure that existing course content meets accessibility standards, and even those that are more prepared, risk not being prepared at all, since there are no standards when you think about inclusive education, nor should it be if we think about students in their diversity of singularities. It’s worth reinforcing that allowing access to spaces, content, and information is a great start, but it does not automatically imply having inclusive learning spaces. According to Schlünzen (2015), to build an inclusive learning environment, we should consider the specificities of all individuals, analyze their learning possibilities, evaluate the effectiveness of the pedagogical approaches available, develop accessible strategies, and provide learning opportunities for every student. Another relevant concept is the difference between integration and inclusion (Mantoan, 2003). In the integration process, access to the regular educational establishment is guaranteed to the student, but this does not mean that segregation will not occur, or that the educational institution will guarantee that changes and adaptations will be made for the student. In accordance with Mantoan (2003), in order for inclusion to actually happen, changes are needed in all spheres, whether structural, organizational, political or individual, given that it is not just about enabling students to attend educational institutions, but to give them the possibility to really learn and succeed. Bearing this in mind, the educational training program developed was based on Schlünzen’s (2000, 2015) Constructionist, Contextualized, and Significant (CCS) approach, as it prioritizes the use of pedagogical and technological strategies using active methodologies to promote the construction of contextualized and meaningful knowledge, without falling into the trap of focusing on patterns that could be seen as a shortcut to building a more inclusive environment, but are not. The CCS Approach is grounded in 20 years of teaching, research, and community engagement experience and modelled by more than 30 researchers from the CPIDES research group. In each of these studies, research was conducted to comprehend the best solution to specific contexts regarding teacher training and student learning, having as its focus precepts of inclusive education. The result of these studies is a compilation of data showing the use of the CCS Approach in very different contexts and proving that the results and benefits are real. Reviews of both seminal studies as well as the latest innovations in the literature in national and international databases have been and are ongoing. The uniqueness of

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this approach emphasizes particularly the proactivity and autonomy of participants, fostering inclusivity through Universal Design, and focusing on the additive value for students with disabilities. The CCS Approach is designed to include people with disabilities and implies the use of learning stimuli that consider the context and the reality of the learners. In other words, it proposes that teaching should be done taking into account the needs and reality of the learner, adding meaning to the content and concepts that are intended to be taught. In this approach, technologies are used with a pedagogical purpose, allowing people with or without disabilities to learn together, in a non-standardized way, synchronously and/or asynchronously, always respecting the student’s pace. In addition, since the educational training program designed was offered exclusively online, another theoretical base was used too: The Theory of Learning Styles in virtual environments proposed by Barros (2009, 2017, 2018). It was chosen due to the fact that it points out guidelines for the understanding of the different learning styles and preferences existing in users of online learning spaces, who can be stimulated to learn more through diversified didactic strategies, personalized activities, and training paths that take into account their specificities and preferences regarding their own learning process. In an eLearning scenario, the observation of the Theory of Learning Styles in virtual environments makes it possible to meet the diversity that characterizes us, looking at differences as a possibility of learning, and also, ensuring the necessary customization so that learning could really be meaningful and accessible to everyone, meeting the prerogatives that the CCS Approach also advocate. Thus, this theory makes important contributions to a better understanding of online learning scenarios, favouring personalization and enabling a better understanding of who online learners are and how they can be stimulated to learn. According to Barros (2009, 2017, 2018), the four predominant learning styles in which it is possible to categorize the preferences that learners have when using virtual spaces are: • Participatory style: Encompasses individuals who like to overcome challenging, dynamic learning situations that require spontaneity and creativity to learn. • Research and investigation style: Encompasses individuals who enjoy learning situations that allow them to research, investigate and explore both activities and the environment where learning takes place. • Structuring and planning style: Covers individuals who enjoy learning situations that allow them to be in charge of processes, understand the method and structure used, propose contents and share ideas. • Concrete action and production style: Comprises individuals who enjoy learning situations that make them experience and/or materialize the theory into their own practice. It is worth emphasizing, however, that the categorization of the Learning Styles into four predominant styles does not mean claiming that each person learns in a single way, or that the identification of a preference for one style would imply the exclusion of another style. What the theory provides is a reflection on the differences that exist in all human beings, helping educators to think of tools and strategies that

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can be used to personalize online teaching, making learning more meaningful for everyone. According to Barros (2009, 2017, 2018), the Theory of Learning Styles in virtual environments helps us not only understand and contemplate the learning styles of learners, but also allows the use of technologies to stimulate and develop nonpredominant characteristics. It is grounded on the recognition that each of us, as beings in constant learning, have preferences in the way we learn, which can be stimulated or improved with strategies such as, for example, the use of technologies and the design of learning spaces that, not only, recognize these individual differences, but also stimulate each learner to purposeful explore self-knowledge and new learning ways. With this aim and according to the guidelines contained in Barros (2018), in the training program developed as part of the doctoral thesis defended, the Theory of Learning Styles was employed together with the CCS approach, in the planning and development of personalized tools and activities, as well as in the opportunities of sharing and building new knowledge with the purpose of stimulating the learning of participants, considering their uniqueness and preferences, as it will be better explained within the next topics.

Rhizomatic Features of the Training Program Created The first thing to clarify regarding the educational training program presented is that it does not have the rhizomatic absence of structures as proposed by Cormier (2008), but it has important rhizomatic features, such as the avoidance of hierarchical structures, the variety and multiplicity of participants, the rupture of paradigms and old patterns that only value those apparently without disabilities; the valorization of individual pathways and embracing uncertainty of inclusive practices; the encouragement of establishing and maintaining connections (Deleuze & Guattari, 1987). The main reason to have some structure and tutoring mentors is that we didn’t want the participants to feel alone or burdened in this pedagogical attempt of becoming more inclusive. The idea was to help participants to understand how teaching practices can be more inclusive and, at the same time, stimulate the sharing and building of knowledge and the constitution of a culture of inclusive education and mutual support. According to Bruno (2010), the networks formed in a rhizomatic perspective are spaces for dialogue, exchange, and growth. Therefore, to create this network, there must be a space for the invention of individual and collective thinking; a space where it is possible not only to encourage the creation of networks, but also the expansion and the questioning of it (Bruno, 2010). To design and build the program, a network started with a small workgroup that consisted of two American designers with a lot of experience with technologies and the best way to use it and, two Brazilian doctorate researchers with background work in the field of inclusive education. Cultural, occupational and mindset differences

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were massive, and this is one of the reasons why the whole process of discussing, building, rebuilding, and rethinking (over and over) was so interesting and valuable. As outlined by the rhizomatic principles, we used our heterogeneity, our multiplicity, our differences, and our assorted way of thinking to strengthen our connection and create something new and better than what could have been done individually. The same happened with course participants, that used their differences to learn from each other, allowing a rupture of former concepts and ideas. This diverse and multicultural background of participants and course architects, added to the constant stimulus of external feedback, gave countless opportunities to optimize the training program. Having inclusion as a common goal and wanting to better practices and processes was the invisible line that connected all the course participants and designers together. The course structure was planned like a map, with orientations that indicate possibilities but did not give answers or determined an endpoint. Participants could choose paths, and learn about accessibility and other theoretical concepts by experiencing them. They could also add information, and share routes and possibilities that could be followed, adjusted or ignored. As already said, a further important rhizomatic feature applied was the absence of commanding figures, replaced by the presence of facilitators that encouraged course participants to share ideas and resources. During the design process, which took 2 years to be concluded, activities and strategies were tested and included aiming to stimulate the contributions of all participants, requesting, and enabling them to exercise the shared carefulness of the training contents, validating and/or indicating the revision or reformulation of the contents. This criterion is aligned not only with the features of a rhizomatic learning environment, but also meets the guiding principles of the theories used, especially the constructionist aspect of the CCS approach, which recommends the construction of knowledge together with learners, and the assumptions of the Design-Based Research (Nobre et al, 2016) that indicate a constant review, reformulation, and improvement of the course design, starting from the participant’s point of view and course results. The course’s structure was divided into 4 modules that went from helping participants to identify common non-inclusive practices to the recognition and implementation of accessible and diversified activities, the use of Universal Design, and the advocacy of inclusive practices and principles. Making connection and discussing possibilities is the first step to recognize that many factors influence our practices helping us to be more or less inclusive, such as the environment where we work, our culture, our friends, and the way we grew, shaping the unconscious bias that unintentionally affects our behaviours. In each module, different resources and activities were used, including moments of dialogue, exchange of experiences, and research starting on the module’s main discussion topic, that is, unconscious bias, accessible media, universal design, and inclusive education. There was also a space where participants could share examples, discuss, ask for help and post any type of media to express their feelings, give testimonials or help their colleagues. Among the context shared, you could find videos, papers and other texts, testimonials and/or lectures (TED talks), pictures, emojis, and so on.

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The moments of discussion and sharing of ideas started from a given topic, for example, the use of multi-format media to promote inclusion, but there was no closing end. Discussions could evolve, continue in the next topic, and/or change format, become an activity shared in a participant’s class, or could end abruptly, as expected in a rhizomatic environment. In addition to the self-reflection made throughout the training program, participants were invited to use the knowledge acquired with the help of technology, to make a self-assessment identifying their own practices and materials with accessibility needs while thinking about potential solutions. On this ground, we can say that it promoted the iterative process of reflection and revision throughout learning and, ultimately, this process led to the creation of a meaningful project that participants were able to apply in their practice. Gamification techniques as well as the constant assistance of online tutors were used also to diminish teacher isolation, provoke constant reflection, and avoid the problems evidenced in self-organized and self-directed learning communities, such as the cMoocs, where some participants felt vulnerable or disconnected with the training program (Mackness & Bell, 2015). Tutoring, however, never meant judging or standardizing ideas since the final purpose of the training program was to foster the establishment of a strong community composed of advocates who know the importance of exchanging knowledge and experiences, acknowledging that inclusion is rhizomatic and therefore the paths towards a more inclusive environment are endless and heterogeneous. Lastly, the design of this training program for educators used innovative techniques and technologies by incorporating an online, asynchronous model that leverages a wide range of multimedia products in one of the fastest-growing learning management systems (LMS) on the market, Canvas. During the training course, participants not only reflect on the advantages of applying the concepts of universal design, but also experience the benefits of this approach firsthand as learners. The activities included extra points for helping colleagues and a final project where the participant demonstrate his or her ability to both analyze an accessibility issue and propose a solution. Presented the theories chosen and the general idea of the training program proposed, in the next topic, it will be explained how the theories were organized to structure the training program.

Applying the Methodologies Chosen to Design the Learning Environment In order to illustrate and better explain how the theories have become activities and strategies, we have outlined a chart with seven regulatory axes that group the main concepts used in the proposed formation.

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Activities and strategies that include apprentices with different characteristics and styles

Activities and strategies that foster interaction and collaboration

Activities and strategies to stimulate knowledge construction and its practical applicability

Activities and strategies aimed at stimulating the development of skills, competences and attitudes

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Activities and strategies that rely on technologies to diversify teaching

Activities and strategies that invite participants to share their reality in order to give meaning to the formative experience

Activities and strategies that pursue the convergence between formal and informal education

Fig. 9.1 Regulatory Axes of the training program proposed. Source Elaborated by the authors (2019) from Schlünzen (2015), Barros (2009, 2017, 2018) and Zaduski et al. (2019)

The first aspect to be observed in Fig. 9.1 is the necessity to think about formative spaces from their rhizomatic characteristics, represented in this sketch by the absence of patterns and an apparent lack of sense for the disposition of information and, by the randomness in sizes, colours, sequence, and order of the bubbles. From this metaphor, what we want to infer is that in a rhizomatic learning space, we cannot give greater importance to one regulatory element to the detriment of another, since they are not defined or created by only one person, but by teamwork that influences and is influenced by each other and also by the course participants. Therefore, the dots alternate in importance, and the connections are done and undone in a constant becoming (Deleuze and Gattari,1995), suitable to an ecosystem that exists in a constant balance and imbalance, in a disform formation, in permanent transformation. For Bruno, “the Deleuzian rhizome has no defined structure, is not fixed, it exists in a constant movement, is multiple” (2010, p. 178). According to the author, networks formed in a rhizomatic perspective are spaces for dialogue, exchange, and growth. This metaphor is important mainly because it is a multifaceted topic, that is, inclusion in educational contexts, which encompasses a multiplicity of factors such as socio-cultural differences, the interests, competences, and skills of those involved, the different contexts of the course participants and so on and so forth. At the same time, according to the studies proposed by Zaduski, Barbosa Lopes, and Schlünzen Junior (2018, p. 7):

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Inclusive education is a complex, comprehensive and multifaceted theme that encompasses situations and challenges for which there are no ready-to-use recipes and definitive solutions. In this sense, discussions about inclusive education can benefit from a rhizomatic learning environment, structured without the pretense that all participants reach the same conclusions or have an interest in discussing the same problems.

Although all the training proposed cannot be considered rhizomatic, as previously explained, the axes presented are, since they are interspersed, overlap and mix, so that the same activity may possess the characteristics of more than one axis, be articulated to it or resume it, as we will see below. • Activities and strategies that include apprentices with different characteristics and styles: In a space of rhizomatic learning, participants are seen and considered for their uniqueness and importance, regardless of their abilities or disabilities. In this context, it is necessary to observe the Theory of Learning Styles in virtual environments (Barros, 2017, 2018), which advocates for the use of a variety of media and formats in training programs, so nobody feels left behind regardless of their preferences and/or needs. Brown (2001, p. 76) explains the opportunities we have thanks to the Internet and digital information and communication technologies to design learning spaces that contemplate the preferences and ways in which different people learn. According to the author The Internet and other technologies honor multiple forms of intelligence—be they abstract, textual, visual, musical, social, or kinesthetic—and therein present tremendous opportunities to design new learning environments that enhance the natural ways that humans learn.

Like Brown (2001), we also believe that technologies can assist in the design of courses or learning spaces that enhance learning, and recognize and value the differences between human beings. • Activities and strategies that pursue the convergence between formal and informal education: The everyday life and work of participants, their history, their preferences for studying and learning, and their formative needs are of great importance, because this is how we can achieve their personal maps, following the lines to understand their individuality, their attitudes, and the unconscious bias they may have. In this learning space, which mixes formal and informal moments, everything is intertwined so that theoretical content makes sense in teaching praxis and knowledge does not focus solely on books, articles, and the speech of teaching authorities. There is no stage here. Everyone is invited to contribute, to bring doubts and bad experiences, good practices, and memorable moments. In this learning space, different opinions are welcomed and valued, and the knowledge learned outside school walls is welcome too. According to Barros (2018, p. 129), since in learning networks, there are no barriers between formal and informal, the design of an online course “should be prepared to create informal learning and teaching spaces with pedagogical intentionality”. For Schlünzen (2015), bringing the context and experience of learners into the formative process is an opportunity for the pedagogical facilitator to give meaning to the concepts in a significant way.

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• Activities and strategies aimed at stimulating the development of skills, competences, and attitudes: Providing access to content and theories in varied formats is important so that participants feel welcome in their different preferences and interests, making it possible for the information made available to become knowledge, resulting in the development of skills and competences. However, to foster changes in the attitude of the participants, it is necessary to demonstrate with practical examples how theories are used and how this transformation can happen. One way of doing it is based on the tripod knowledge—skills—attitudes, originally proposed by McClelland in 1973. Although being a proposal most frequently used by managers and administrators, it is a concept that can be applied in learning environments, bearing in mind that the knowledge construction and the development of new skills will only allow for inclusive education to really happen if it is accompanied by practical attitudes. In other words, more than theoretical knowledge, it is the practical attitudes that will, for example, make it possible for a material that was previously inaccessible or non-existent to become in fact available for everyone. • Activities and strategies that invite participants to share their reality in order to give meaning to the formative experience: To add meaning to the formative experience, participants are encouraged to build their knowledge from something that awakens their interest. To this end, the activities need to take into account the situations experienced within the context of learners, in order to add meaning to the educational experiences (COLL, 2016), which, in the case of the proposed training, was possible from the observation of the premises of the CCS approach. Brown states that learning is a social process in which teaching is only one of the components and must, therefore, be inseparable from the context in which the apprentice is inserted. For him, “It’s profoundly misleading and ineffective to separate information, theories, and principles from the activities and situations within which they are used. Knowledge is inextricably situated in the physical and social context of its acquisition and use.” (Brown, 2001, p. 65). This thinking collaborates with the CCS approach (Schlunzen, 2015), whose basis is also the Vygotsky social interactionism, recognizing and valuing the importance of interactions and everyday life for learning acquisition. • Activities and strategies to stimulate knowledge construction and its practical applicability: In addition to customization, contextualization, and stimulus to learn that can be made in accordance with the Theory of Learning Styles in virtual environments (Barros, 2009, 2017, 2018), the learning environment should provide a secure place and network for participants to experiment and use the knowledge acquired through the activities shared. These could be done with peers, by themselves or with the facilitators, providing opportunities for reflection and the questions that come only when the time to practice arrives. According to Santos (2015, p. 109), training for educators elaborated on the basis of the CCS approach enables them to “establish links with the new learning built, in order to assign quality to the learning contents through their prior knowledge.” Thus, the purposeful and grounded reflections in practical and everyday situations allow the

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training program to avoid being mechanized, granting it the possibility of having previous planning that serves as a map, but at the same time, being susceptible to changes at each intervention, each questioning, every doubt, as a rhizomatic learning space should be. • Activities and strategies that rely on technologies to diversify teaching: Technologies, especially when regarding the virtual universe, are the link that brings together or alienates learners with disabilities or special needs. In general, they give the opportunity for innovation to happen or, they can lead to the reproduction of old teaching practices. They can be used for the purpose of diversifying and customizing teaching, enabling inclusive practices to be done, responding to the diverse needs of apprentices, or it can be used as an excuse to repeat old habits. Therefore, it is still important to reinforce that technologies alone are not sufficient to stimulate learning and should be combined with appropriate teaching strategies and methodologies (Kalantzis; Cope, 2017). According to Barros (2018, p. 127) The learning platforms, digital technologies and available resources do not translate themselves into a didactic innovation for online education. It is necessary to have a didactic organization that is anchored in theoretical assumptions that take into account the student as author, as an active participant in the collective learning process.

According to Melques (2017), when we talk about inclusive education, we need to consider the individuality of apprentices, valuing their skills and potentialities, without emphasizing or focusing on their limitations. In this sense, the strategic use of technologies helps to promote inclusion as it makes it possible to diversify the formative offer that can, for example, become available in different formats (text, video, audio, sign language, among others). • Activities and strategies that foster interaction and collaboration: Considering the pedagogical proposal of Vygotsky’s social interactionism (1974), as one of the bases on which the CCS approach is structured, we cannot leave aside the importance of social interaction in the teaching and learning processes. In this sense, in a learning space, activities and strategies should be considered in order to stimulate interaction, collaboration, and peer learning. As Schlünzen stated: We observe the influence of humanist and cognitive approaches in this process, which generate a CCS approach, in which subjects are stimulated: To learn to use technology; taking ownership of resources; sharing digital content and accessing information and people; to use resources to systematize their reflections; to build the knowledge from the problematic situations experienced in daily life, transforming himself and his context into a dialectical relationship between the inter psychological and the intra psychological (Vygotsky, 1989 apud Schlünzen, 2015, p. 91)

Barros (2018, p. 8) complements by stating that the didactic design of online training must be structured in such a way as “to allow for diverse spaces of interaction to happen in the same virtual space”. The author also highlights the fundamental role of didactic in designing online training so that this formative space promotes the construction of networking knowledge from interactions and the sharing of practices among participants.

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Regarding the training program developed, the strategies were elaborated, mainly, in accordance with the guiding theories already exposed, accompanied by reflections and discussions with the mentors and the work team, so that they were in accordance with the online learning context, the uniqueness of the apprentices and, the educational objectives proposed. Siemens (2006) already suggested this idea by proposing that learning spaces provide a variety of possibilities to address the diversity of apprentices’ needs, styles, and perspectives. For him, a learning community consists of differentiated spaces in which the apprentice will participate in the different stages that are part of his learning process. The choice and duration of each moment will be determined by the characteristics and desires of the apprentice himself, in addition to the possibilities offered in the learning space in which he is inserted. In this sense, when proposing learning spaces, we need to consider the greatest number of opportunities and variables possible, in order to ensure that everyone is considered in their educational needs, skills, and competences. According to Coll (2013), when we think of learning from an ecological perspective, more important than what we already know is our ability to continue learning, seek information, and acquire knowledge. Combined with this perspective, we can count on a variety of internal and external tools and technologies that allow customization of learning environments, diversification of practices and contexts, in addition to the possibilities that are available to us when using resources such as gamification, simulation, virtual reality, augmented reality, and many others. However, it must be stressed that ‘technology is pedagogically neutral’ (Kalantzis & Cope, 2017, p. 14), and therefore, it is up to the teacher and/or educational designer, or rather, it is up to the work team, to establish educational objectives for which the technologies should or should not be used for a specific purpose, which may be to provide greater engagement of the participants, enabling the inclusion of disabled people, encouraging participants to learn new skills, contemplating different learning styles, among others. According to Mishra and Koehler (2006, p. 132), the insertion of technologies in educational processes does not guarantee their integration into pedagogical practices. Fluency in educational technologies goes beyond the handling of tools, encompassing the understanding of the complex web of relationships existing between users, technologies, practices, and tools. In the authors’ words: merely introducing technology to the educational process is not enough to ensure technology integration since technology alone does not lead to change. Rather, it is the way in which teachers use technology that has the potential to change education (Carr, Jonassen, Litzinger, & Marra, 1998). For teachers to become fluent with educational technology means going beyond mere competence with the latest tools (Zhao, 2003), to developing an understanding of the complex web of relationships between users, technologies, practices, and tools. (Mishra & Koehler, 2006, p. 132)

For this reason, we will not discuss, nor recommend, the use of a specific resource or tool here, not even the specific technological features of a particular learning platform, choosing to prioritize the recommendation for the use of alternatives and

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an open-minded approach of being able to try new possibilities, always accompanied by didactic or pedagogical intentionality that contextualize and/or justify its use. Still, in this perspective, Barros (2017, p. 6) states that: the choice of tools cannot be the main focus, but the use that will be made of them. The theory of Learning Styles in virtual environments help us to verify the importance of using technologies in the education process, precisely by the offering of possibilities that its interfaces, tools, resources, and applications offer to meet learning preferences and individualities.

In a nutshell, more important than technology is the pedagogy and the strategies that can be used to promote meaningful learning, giving learning opportunities to every learner.

Final Considerations The study made, and the feedback received from course participants, demonstrated that the pedagogical and intentional use of technology can empower educators, helping them to see students with disabilities as valuable participants in the learning community instead of as an added instructional burden. It has shown that by helping educators to better understand how technology can level the playing field for learners with disabilities, they are more willing to incorporate these technologies for the benefit of all students. Unfortunately, this does not mean that there will not be difficulties or that there is an easy way to transform educational practices into something more predictable and less chaotic. However, we are not alone. There are many theories available to strengthen our practices, and several communities already discussing new ways of using technologies, training programs to attend, and possibilities to uncover. Connections with other educators and the sharing of experiences can make us stronger, allowing us to rupture old patterns and try new roads, new methods and unpredictable ways in this complicated, unique and wonderful map called inclusive education.

References Barros, D. M. V. (2009). Estilos de uso do espaço virtual: como se aprende e se ensina no virtual? Inter-Ação: Rev. Fac. Educ., UFG, Goiânia, n. 34, v. 1, p. 51–74, jan./jun., 2009. https://www. revistas.ufg.br/interacao/article/download/6542/4803 Barros, D. M. V. (2017). Metodologia em Ead: estilos e uso do espaço virtual como perspectiva pedagógica para o design. Seminário Internacional de Pesquisa em Políticas Públicas e Desenvolvimento Social, Franca, 2017. Barros, D. M. V. (2018). Metodologia em EaD: estilos de uso do espaço virtual como perspectiva pedagógica para o design. CAMINE Caminhos da Educação—Ways of Education, 10(2), p. 116– 141. https://ojs.franca.unesp.br/index.php/caminhos/article/view/2618. Brown, J. S. (2001). Learning in the digital age. The Internet and the University.

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Chapter 10

Exploring Rhizomatic Learning on Twitter Through Research on Teacher Professional Development Martina Emke and Agnes Kukulska-Hulme

Introduction Rhizomatic Learning (RL) has great potential for educational research and for innovating pedagogy, as it promotes “an appreciation of the power of the network” (Sharples et al., 2012). Although it has been used in various areas of education, it appears that RL remains a somewhat elusive concept which has not reached its potential in educational research yet. One of the reasons for this might be that the philosophical foundations of RL, and in particular the concept of rhizome (Deleuze & Guattari, 1987), present “problems of inaccessibility” (Harris, 2016, p. 12), due to conceptual and terminological complexity. In this chapter, we argue that methodological issues associated with putting Deleuzo–Guattarian concepts to work in research can be overcome by researchers thoroughly engaging with these concepts and developing their own readings of RL within their research. The first part of the chapter puts RL in context with reference to its theoretical foundation, namely the concept of rhizome (Deleuze & Guattari, 1987), focusing on Cormier’s understanding of RL (Cormier, 2008). Cormier’s thoughts on RL and his facilitation of two Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) on the topic of RL have been influential in educational discussion and research, in particular in connection with new understandings of online community and curriculum development. This is also exemplified in a brief literature review on the application of RL in Internet-related educational research, which is provided in the next part of the chapter. Following on from that, the methodological opportunities and challenges of applying the concept of RL are outlined against the background of an investigation into language teachers’ Twitter-based professional development. In the final part of M. Emke (B) Netzwerk hdw nrw at Bielefeld University of Applied Sciences and Arts, Bielefeld, Germany e-mail: [email protected] A. Kukulska-Hulme The Open University, Milton Keynes, United Kingdom © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2023 M. S. Khine (ed.), Rhizome Metaphor, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-19-9056-4_10

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the chapter, it is argued that multiple possible readings of RL could help make the concept more approachable and available to researchers, enabling different insights and more varied research in teacher professional development and beyond.

Rhizomatic Learning and the Concept of Rhizome Rhizomatic Learning (RL) has been referred to as a metaphor for knowledge construction in the digital age (Cormier, 2008) and as a learning theory (Brailas, 2020), but despite researchers’ attempts to provide definitions, the concept is not easily understood or applied in research and educational practice. This section seeks to make RL more approachable by putting Dave Cormier’s understanding of RL in context and explaining its philosophical foundation, the concept of rhizome (Deleuze & Guattari, 1987). RL, in particular as a metaphor, is often linked to Cormier’s understanding and enactments of Deleuze and Guattari’s (1987) philosophical concept of rhizome (Harris, 2016; Mackness et al., 2016). Cormier has described his perspectives of RL in a short article (Cormier, 2008), in an evolving ebook (Cormier, n.d.) and on his blog Dave’s Educational Blog (see for example Cormier, 2006). Furthermore, he has applied RL in two Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) titled #rhizo14 (Bell et al., 2016; Bozkurt et al., 2016) and #rhizo15 (Harris, 2016). Cormier (2008) criticizes traditional, hierarchical understandings of teaching and learning, which rely on the content and inputs which are provided by experts and argues that the rhizome metaphor might be useful for developing conceptions of knowledge suited to the information age. Later, Cormier explains (2015, p. 64) that his view of RL is closely linked to his experiences with working in online communities: Along with some colleagues we started meeting regularly online for live interactive webcasts starting in 2005 at Edtechtalk. We learned by working together, sharing our experiences and understanding. The outcomes of those discussions were more about participating and belonging than about specific items of content – the content was already everywhere around us on the web.

Central to Cormier’s metaphorical understanding of RL is the idea that participation in an online community leads to a new kind of curriculum development: The idea is to think of a classroom/community/network as an ecosystem in which each person is spreading his or her understanding among the pieces of information available in that ecosystem. Publicly wending one’s way through that accumulation of knowledge (by content creation and sharing) provides a contextual curriculum to remix back into the existing research/thoughts/ideas in a given field. An individual’s own rhizomatic learning experience creates the curriculum for others. (Cormier, 2015, p. 65)

However, the conceptual use of metaphors can be problematic, because metaphors are much more than linguistic tools: “New metaphors have the power to create a new reality” (Lakoff & Johnson, 2008, p. 131). In conceptualisations of learning, as well as in scientific investigations, metaphors are helpful in revealing the deep-rooted

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assumptions and beliefs which underpin academics’ research and are not always openly stated (Sfard, 1998). Cormier’s metaphorical conceptualisation of the rhizome stands in contrast to Deleuze and Guattari’s (1987), for whom metaphors and categories belong to arborescent and linear structures, and as such they are opposed to the philosophical thinking and concepts described in their seminal work A Thousand Plateaus. In their book, Deleuze and Guattari (1987) drew on the botanical term ‘rhizome’, which refers to plant life, such as the growth of grass roots in the soil, to explore radically different ideas regarding human knowledge construction and learning. Organized in plateaus, the book itself can be conceived of as a rhizome: “We are writing this book as a rhizome. It is composed of plateaus.” (Deleuze & Guattari, 1987, p. 22). Without providing any definition of the term ‘rhizome’, the authors developed their own concept of rhizome and described it with the help of six principles: connection, heterogeneity, multiplicity, a-signifying rupture, cartography, and decalcomania. However, these are not defining principles; rather they “could be conceived of as signposts that facilitate reading the map that constitutes the concept of rhizome.” (Emke, 2019, p. 61). Deleuze and Guattari (1987) relate the term ‘rhizome’ to disparate entities, such as animals, music, the unconscious, burrows, or puppet strings, but the common thread is that of fostering open, divergent thinking, and non-representational thinking. Furthermore, the concept of rhizome is related to other philosophical concepts developed in the book, such as the concepts of assemblage and of becoming, which adds to the philosophical complexity and makes the application of Deleuzo–Guattarian concepts in educational theory and practice inherently challenging (Harris, 2016). Contrary to traditional approaches of knowledge acquisition and transfer, which follow the notion that an idea or a concept needs to be understood before it can be applied, the authors are interested in what the interactions between their book, the reader, and the world at large may produce: “We will never ask what a book means, as signified or signifier; we will not look for anything to understand in it. We will ask what it functions with, in connection with what other things it does or does not transmit intensities …” (Deleuze & Guattari, 1987, p. 4). For this to happen, a reader—or a researcher—needs to engage with Deleuzo–Guattarian concepts and their philosophical thinking to create their own concepts (Deleuze & Guattari, 1994). In a later work, Deleuze (1995, pp. 7–8) emphasized the importance of engaging with philosophical concepts and acknowledged that this might not work for everyone: There are, you see, two ways of reading a book: ….Or there’s the other way: you see the book as a little non-signifying machine, and the only question is “Does it work, and how does it work?” How does it work for you? If it doesn’t work, if nothing comes through, you try another book. This second way of reading’s intensive: something comes through or it doesn’t.

Considering Deleuze and Guattari’s understanding of a rhizome characterized by multiplicity and heterogeneity and their scepticism of metaphors, in this chapter we propose to conceive of RL as a variety of theoretical and practical approaches which are—more or less closely—related to the philosophical thinking and concepts presented in Deleuze and Guattari’s joint work A Thousand Plateaus (1987).

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In educational research, the botanical metaphor of rhizome has been used in a variety of contexts. However, this begs the question to what extent educational researchers, and particularly researchers engaged with internet-based research, have actually developed their own understanding of RL based on their reading of the Deleuzo–Guattarian concept of rhizome, and in what way(s) they have applied their understanding of RL in research.

Rhizomatic Learning in Internet-Related Educational Research Among the concepts which Deleuze and Guattari developed and explained in their work A Thousand Plateaus, the concept of rhizome might arguably be the one which has been taken up most widely in educational research. Studies which refer to the concept of rhizome range from teacher education (Strom & Martin, 2017) to investigations of classroom interactions (de Freitas, 2012), early childhood learning (Bone & Edwards, 2015), arts instruction (Ellis, 2016), language education (Bangou et al., 2019; Masny, 2013), outdoor environmental education (Stewart, 2020), and physical education (Hordvik et al., 2019). Another reason for its popularity may be that the RL metaphor can be applied to a variety of educational systems and networks: “the application of the “rhizome” in education refers to systems or structures that are non-linear, a-centred, non-hierarchical, without a single general organising principle and that are continuously making new connections.” (Kinchin, 2017, p. 189). There is even an academic journal, titled Rhizomes: Cultural Studies in Emerging Knowledge, whose editors encourage authors to publish experimental work that does not reside within the narrow confines of academic disciplines. For this chapter, research articles which feature Internet-based research in the context of teaching and learning are of particular interest. Buchanan (2007) compared the six principles of the concept of rhizome to the realities of the Internet to answer the question whether the Internet is a rhizome. The author clarified that “the rhizome is not manifest in things, but rather a latent potential that has to be realised by experimentation” (p. 12) and maintained that “The rhizome of the Internet cannot simply be the pre-existing network of connected computers.” (p. 12). Internet-related issues and challenges, which could not be addressed adequately with theories and practices stemming from pre-Internet times, may also be the reason why researchers have attempted to apply RL in their investigations, often in combination with other approaches to learning and teaching. In an early study of an adolescent videogaming community, Sandford et al. (2011) found that the rhizome metaphor “supplements our thinking about complex systems, providing a more comprehensive stance from which to understand gaming and learning communities” (p. 50). However, the authors do not mention how they worked with the concept of rhizome to arrive at their understanding of RL, and they do not extend RL to the technological side of videogaming, although they acknowledge that gamers’ use and knowledge

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of video games is “integrally intertwined with their knowledge of internet sites, blogs, Facebook, YouTube, music, graphics, Machinima, and various other recent technologies” (p. 51). In a similar vein, Zaduski et al. (2018) see RL as part of an array of theories and approaches that have been developed in the wake of the Internet: “In this sense, it is important to reflect on concepts such as open education, open educational resources, connectivism and rhizomatic learning environments, given that these are themes that are articulated and strengthened due to the cyberculture, to the new tools proposed by digital technologies and new ways of communicating and interacting in learning environments.” (Zaduski et al., 2018, p. 490). The authors regard connectivist MOOCs as precursors of a rhizomatic virtual learning environment, “which can be modified, restructured and reinvented by each and every participant” (Zaduski et al., 2018, p. 494), with its structure being based on notions derived from the Deleuzo–Guattarian concept of rhizome, albeit restricted to its botanical context: As a definition, we find the concept of rhizome in the middle of the studies of botany, in which it is defined as a root whose shape is unequal when compared to that of other roots since each branch can be different, with different size, shape and thickness. (pp. 494–495)

Unfortunately, Zaduski et al. do not provide their own definition of RL. Their view of learning (Zaduski et al., 2018, p. 496) focuses on online communities but also touches upon the Deleuzo–Guattarian concept of becoming without further explanation: It is expected that the participants of this in-service training will establish lasting relationships with their peers, […] This opens up the possibility for the creation of learning communities, where learning is understood to be fluid, without beginning and end, in an incessant beingbecoming.

Similar to Zaduski et al. (2018), Blaschke and Hase (2019) as being see RL connected to other educational theories which are suited to online learning but do not provide their own understanding of RL; instead, thy refer to Cormier (2008). Blaschke and Hase’s particular interest lies with heutagogy: “Similar to heutagogy, rhizomatic learning is non-linear, with the student autonomously defining the learning path and attempting to acquire knowledge within chaos, while partly guided by the instructor.” (Blaschke & Hase, 2019, p. 6). Other researchers have applied the rhizome metaphor for designing virtual learning networks, for instance, in the context of Asean learning communities (Lian & Pineda, 2014), English language education (Kara, 2019) or mathematics curriculum (Januario et al., 2021). However, these and similar approaches focus on autonomous human beings rather than on humantechnological relations and eschew a deeper engagement with Deleuzo–Guattarian thinking beyond the confines of the botanical RL metaphor. Calbraith (2021) considers RL in the context of theory formation for mobile learning pedagogy and research, drawing attention to the multiple learning paths and unpredictable knowledge flows associated with advanced conceptualisations of mobile learning. Outside of formal class settings, mobile learners create their own ecologies of learning resources through their activity on social media platforms

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and out in the world, where they connect with others, find materials, and create them for other people. These organic processes have not been well researched to date, but they align with learner-centred approaches in education that emphasize learners’ autonomy, which can be supported and expanded through the use of mobile technologies. In the sphere of language learning, where such activity is associated with positive motivation and access to varied learning resources, Read et al. (2021) have argued that networked technology has led to the emergence of a new paradigm combining mobile, open and social learning. Research within this paradigm may require new research methodologies such as those inspired by RL. Brailas (2020, p. 3) offers a non-linear, performative, multimodal model which invites university students of one particular course—and a wider public—to explore RL by themselves rather than relying on preconceived notions of RL. The author’s approach to RL considers human-technological relations and shows a deeper engagement with Deleuzo–Guattarian thinking: Therefore, rhizomatic learning can be defined as the process of extending, nurturing, cultivating, and catalyzing the development of a living network, consisting of knowledgeable agents, both human and artificial, and material objects/resources.

The virtual exposition (https://doi.org/10.22501/rc.782366) is used in the abovementioned Systems Theory, Psychology & Social Media course at the Panteion University (Greece): “In this course, Erasmus students co-create a unique and wonderful multi-cultural environment.” (Brailas, 2020, p. 5). The rhizomatic learning model can be entered in different ways and in a non-linear fashion, taking up the idea of plateaus, as proposed by Deleuze and Guattari (1987). This virtual exposition can be regarded as an RL experimentation. Two RL experimentations in the form of Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) were facilitated by Dave Cormier. These experimentations will be investigated in the next section.

Rhizomatic Learning in MOOCs: #Rhizo14 and #Rhizo15 In 2014 and 2015, Cormier initiated and facilitated two MOOCs, titled “Rhizomatic Learning—The community is the curriculum. Honeychurch and colleagues (2016, p. 27) state that “Cormier’s goal for #rhizo14 was to enact and model the rhizomatic learning approach.”. To participants and a wider audience these two MOOCs were informally known as #rhizo14 and #rhizo15. Both MOOCs were informed by connectivism, “a network theory of knowledge and learning with an emphasis on the use of digital technology to enhance and extend interaction online” (Downes, 2019, p. 113), focused on RL in the context of community and curriculum development (Bell et al., 2016 for #rhizo14) and rhizomatic education (Harris, 2016 for #rhizo15). Conole (2016, p. 18)) contends that connectivist MOOCs (cMOOCS) “align well with Cormier’s notion of Rhizomatic learning”. Interestingly, Downes (2019) neither explicitly refers to #rhizo14 or #rhizo in his summary of recent work linked with connectivism, nor does he discuss RL.

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Each of the courses officially lasted for six weeks; the course interactions took place on different Internet sites, including personal websites (blogs), though #rhizo14 was also hosted on a course platform (P2PU). The hashtags #rhizo14 and #rhizo15 were used to send direct messages in the accompanying social media platforms, among them Twitter. Twitter (https://twitter.com) is a microblogging platform where users can share information or communicate with each other through written messages—tweets—of up to currently 280 characters. The open MOOCs were sparsely structured and based on one challenging question per week. Since the MOOCs were open and conversations stretched across different platforms, it is difficult to gauge the exact number of participants. However, there may have been well over 500 participants in the #rhizo14 course (Mackness & Bell, 2015). For #rhizo15 Bozkurt et al. (2016) report Twitter activities for a maximum of 431 participants. Some participants chose to continue their discussions beyond the duration of the course. Tying RL to curricular matters and to the people who organized, facilitated, and participated in the #rhizo14 and #rhizo15 led to very different participant-researcher assessments of its outcomes. Bali et al. (2016) used collaborative autoethnography to understand their #rhizo14 experiences. The authors refer to Cormier for a definition of RL and felt that “familiarity with Deleuze and Guattari’s rhizome metaphor is not necessary to appreciate #rhizo14” (p. 54). However, Honeychurch et al. (2016) and Mackness et al. (2016) report that the question of whether or not engagement with the Deleuzo–Guattarian concept of rhizome was important for discussing RL led to heated discussions during #rhizo14 and “resulted in some individuals from both sides of the debate leaving the course, while some others who remained became closer through this experience” (Honeychurch e al., 2016, p. 35). Mackness and colleagues (2016) investigated #rhizo14 participants’ understanding and usage of the concept of rhizome during the course. From their research, the authors concluded that “if the rhizome is going to be used as a stimulus for change, then superficial treatment and understanding of the concept is potentially damaging for learners’ becoming.” (p. 88). The authors further cautioned that the metaphorical use of the Deleuzo– Guattarian concept of rhizome in educational contexts requires both knowledge and understanding of the concept and of the inherent limitations associated with the application of metaphors to teaching and learning. In their investigation of #rhizo15 Bozkurt et al. (2016, p. 7) present the following definition of rhizomatic thinking and RL: Rhizomatic thinking, and by extension rhizomatic learning, is a philosophy, a heutagogical approach, a critical approach, and a combination of all these; yet most importantly it is a form of inquiry for those that excel in learning from informal experiences.

The authors claim that their “research explains both rhizomatic thinking and rhizomatic learning through a literature review” (p. 20). Yet, the sources cited in the relevant parts of the literature review mainly refer to either Deleuze and Guattari’s (1987) original work or to Cormier’s understanding of RL, without either substantiating the link between RL and heutagogy or discussing the problematic use of RL as a metaphor beyond acknowledging in the authors’ notes (Bozkurt et al., 2016,

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p. 21) that Cormier was aware of Deleuze and Guattari’s aversion to metaphors. Harris (2016, p. 2), who participated in the #rhizo15 MOOC, acknowledges Cormier’s work for developing online rhizomatic learning but criticizes that his understanding of RL “is mentioned in virtually all definitions of rhizomatic education, almost entirely positively”. Additionally, frequent repetition of one particular understanding of RL could be detrimental for knowledge building in educational research: From a Deleuzo-Guattarian point of view it could be argued that one reading of the concept of rhizome has led to a territorialisation of the concept of rhizome, thereby stifling attempts to develop other readings that could inform research and lead to different perspectives.” (Emke, 2019, p. 71).

In his article, Harris (2016) analyses the discussions for each of the six weeks and finds a lack of engagement with Deleuze-Guattarian thinking among participants which impacted negatively on their learning. The author claims that participants resorted to “personal offence in criticism” (p. 10), to “relativistic reading which leaves any personal interpretation immune” (ibid.) and to “argue on the grounds of unassailable personal authenticity” (ibid.) which impacted negatively on their learning: Ironically, the cMOOC formation that delivered ‘rhizomatic education’ did not seem to encourage the sort of challenging pedagogic engagement that seems necessary if people are to explore Deleuzian work. (Harris, 2016, p. 12)

From the literature review, and in particular exemplified by the #rhizo14 and #rhizo15 RL MOOCs, it has become apparent that applying Deleuzo–Guattarian concepts and combining them with other learning theories in educational research is inherently problematic. Specifically, the metaphorical use of the concept of rhizome in research incurs the risk of oversimplification: “The tragic paradox is that the rhizome has found a hospitable niche in pedagogical discourse only as a metaphor for de-centered and non-hierarchical systems of organization.” (Gregoriou, 2004, p. 240). Despite problems of inaccessibility, researchers should not feel discouraged from engaging with Deleuzo–Guattarian concepts in and for their research. The next section will provide an insight into the methodological challenges and opportunities of ‘applying’ Deleuzo–Guattarian concepts and show a practice example to help researchers make informed decisions in their research design and to inspire researchers to develop their own understandings of RL.

Methodological Challenges and Opportunities to Applying RL in Research Researchers interested in applying Deleuzo–Guattarian philosophical concepts in their educational research are faced with a number of challenges, of which overcoming ‘representational thinking-doing’ and embracing the notion of multiplicity are arguably the most difficult.

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Going beyond methodological controversies surrounding dualistic thinking of quantitative vs qualitative research methodologies, the problem of representation touches the very core of what it means to do research (Masny, 2016). Traditionally, researchers attempt to understand and investigate real-life phenomena by making comparisons and by differentiating between similarity and dissimilarity, i.e. by applying representational thinking. Given the seemingly intuitive accessibility of the botanical rhizome metaphor, it is therefore no surprise that researchers trained in conventional research methodologies have applied the metaphor or the principles of the Deleuzo–Guattarian concept of rhizome in the same ways they are used to. However, Harris (2016) cautions that “Conventional approaches seeing concepts as descriptions of underlying essential characteristics or empirical regularities should be rethought” (p. 7) when researchers draw on Deleuzo–Guattarian philosophical concepts, as “the central emphasis should be on heterogeneity and difference, not similarity.” (p. 7). Mazzei and McCoy (2010) criticize the metaphorical use of Deleuze–Guattarian concepts and suggest that researchers “use the figurations presented by Deleuze to think research and data differently and to explore how such thinking could inform methodology without simply re-inscribing the old methodology with a new language” (p. 504). On a fundamental level, St. Pierre (2016) takes issue with the use of Deleuzo– Guattarian concepts in conventional research studies because of incommensurable ontological and empiricist differences. The author concludes that educational researchers need to be untrained to enable “educational research-to-come as difference instead of repetition” (p. 10). Some RL studies (e.g. Brailas, 2020, Kinchin, 2017) demonstrate that researchers have tried to carry out “experimentation in contact with the real” (Deleuze & Guattari, 1987, p. 12). However, the examples of the #rhizo14 and #rhizo15 MOOCs described in the previous section show that experimentations in RL challenged the participants to such a degree that some of the participants resorted to superficial or no engagement with Deleuzo–Guattarian concepts at all. Central to the Deleuzo–Guattarian concepts of rhizome, assemblage and becoming is the notion of multiplicity, which marks a notable departure from a conventional (research) understanding of humans as autonomous, rational subjects. From a Deleuzo–Guattarian point of view everything is a multiplicity—including humans: “Forms of subjectivity are also condensations of multiplicities, […]. The processes operate on individual human beings as on any other non-human objects” (Harris, 2016, p. 7). Therefore, “it would be mistaken to embrace the old notion of a sovereign individual entirely in charge of their conscious thought processes and actions” (ibid.). A Deleuzo–Guattarian ontology defies conventional concepts of identity, and it is not tied to biological stages; rather, it is interested in becoming which is produced within assemblages. Assemblages can be viewed as “complex constellations of objects, bodies, expressions, qualities, and territories that come together for varying periods of time to ideally create new ways of functioning” (Livesey, 2010, p.18). Deleuzo– Guattarian becoming regards humans as “a qualitative multiplicity” (Semetsky, 2003, p. 213), as subjectivities, which are produced within dynamically changing assemblages of human and non-human elements. Without a clearly defined start and finish,

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becoming is always already happening in-between, a continuous, fluid transitioning between that which was and that which is not yet; becoming is entirely unpredictable. In summary, it could be argued that underlying discussions around the application of Deleuzo–Guattarian concepts in research is a necessity to make the complex thinking-doing processes involved in working with Deleuzo–Guattarian concepts transparent: “This is perhaps the lesson Deleuzian work offers us, not a set of privileged concepts to be applied, but a demonstration of how to do philosophy for ourselves.” (Harris, 2016, p. 9). The next section shows a research example, in which performative maps were used to aid and illustrate thinking-doing processes relating to research methodology.

Working with Deleuzo–Guattarian Concepts in One’s Research: Methodology as Assemblage As mentioned before, Deleuze and Guattari (1987) left no roadmap which would tell researchers how to apply their concepts; instead they invited readers of their book to engage with their philosophical concepts to create new and different thinking-doing. In research, such an engagement entails re-thinking conventional understanding of human-technology relations and research methodology. The example described in this section draws on a doctoral investigation of freelance language teachers’ (FLTs) Twitter-based professional development (PD) (Emke, 2019). The research framework was inspired by the Deleuzo–Guattarian concepts of rhizome, assemblage and becoming, and it brought together an assemblage of online narrative frame questionnaires, grounded theory, and social network analysis. Conventionally, studies of Twitter for professional purposes regard Twitter as a tool (e.g. Carpenter & Krutka, 2014), a medium (e.g. Quan-Haase et al., 2015) or a space (Rehm & Notten, 2016), i.e. as an ‘objective’ entity which humans use, control, and manipulate. However, this assumption grants agency to humans only and not to the complex and dynamic processes involved in technology-supported networked learning. Breaking away from an anthropocentric perspective, Emke’s (2019) study understands Twitter as a platform, a space (where humans and technology come together in the act of tweeting), a tool (which helps humans pursue their professional development interests) and as a medium (which links to other media, websites, and platforms), i.e. as multiplicity. Engaging with assemblage thinking led the author to develop the concept of ‘Twitter machine’ (Emke, 2020) and to reconceptualize tweets and hashtags as situated assemblages of human and non-human elements. Within and through these assemblages Deleuzo–Guattarian becoming pertaining to both language teachers and professional development is continuously being produced. Understanding Twitter’s functionalities to work within tweets and hashtags assemblages acknowledges multiplicity and the power of non-human voices in research (Emke, 2021).

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Deeper engagement with the concepts of rhizome, assemblage and becoming also inspired a different conceptualisation of methodology, away from a dualistic thinking of qualitative/quantitative methods, and away from viewing methods as research tools and understanding research processes as linear and controllable. Instead, methods are seen to be performative in the production of different (research) realities (Law, 2004), research processes are understood to be non-linear and unpredictable, and methodology is regarded as. assemblages of human elements (e.g. the researcher, participants, other (doctoral) researchers, supervisors) and non-human elements (e.g. software/tools/platforms employed for data collection, analysis, documentation and communication, Twitter, tweets) that have the capability of producing situated knowledges (Haraway, 1988) about FLTs’ Twitter based PD. (Emke, 2019, p. 101)

Over a period of almost two years of “ongoing intermingling of data, methodology and analysis, enmeshed with theorizing the literature and practising the theory” (Sellers, 2015, p. 6), a series of experimental visuals was developed, to accompany and document the reconceptualisation of methodology as assemblages. The creation of the visuals was inspired by Deleuzo–Guattarian notions of maps as open and flexible vehicles, which can be entered in multiple ways (Deleuze & Guattari, 1987). Figure 10.1 provides an overview of research assemblages within the landscape of freelance language teachers’ Twitter-based professional development, which is part of a larger territory of Twitter for professional development. Each of the five boxes depicted in Fig. 10.1 contains components of methodology assemblages, which at that particular time in the research process were ‘Twitter and professional development’ (envisioning the relationship between Twitter and teacher professional development in different ways), ‘Thinking differently with

Fig. 10.1 Methodology as assemblages. Source Author

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Deleuze’ (reflections about working with Deleuzo–Guattarian concepts in educational research), ‘Pathways/Data collection’ (theorizing and experimenting with different methods of data collection and the ways they relate to each other), Rhizoanalysis/Data analysis’ (theorizing and experimenting with different ways to analyse the collected data in a relational ways) and ‘Dealing with challenges’ (engaging with practical and ethical challenges in research). These assemblages, which included textual and non-textual artefacts, were constantly changing products of complex, open, and not always directional processes of thinking-reading-discussing-writingdoing research. Figure 10.2 illustrates the part of the ‘Pathways/Data collection’ assemblage which was linked to online interviews with six research participants, which were termed ‘co-researchers’ at that point to address power issues in research. These interviews were informed by data previously collected via narrative frame questionnaires, research memos, and tweet data. During the online interviews, tweet data was shared with the participants to investigate the stories behind particular tweets and their connections with other tweet and hashtag assemblages and to trace stories of Deleuzo–Guattarian becoming. At the same time, this assemblage was helpful for theorizing data collection methods not as tools but as pathways into the landscape of Twitter-based professional development, engendering relational and rhizomatic thinking and working against representational and binary thinking. Reconceptualising methodology as assemblages was crucial for focusing the study on FLTs’ Twitter-based PD stories of Deleuzo–Guattarian becoming rather than on stories of gain, which claim Twitter’s usefulness for “just-in-time professional development” (Greenhalgh & Koehler, 2017). However, such stories of gain tend to overlook the rhizomatic movement of tweet and hashtag assemblages across time and

Fig. 10.2 Partial view of ‘Pathways/Data collection’ assemblage. Source Author

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space, and their capability for producing unpredictable preparations for (language) teacher’s future careers.

Conclusions Conceived in the last century in a specific cultural setting, the ideas originally formulated by Deleuze and Guattari (1987) challenged established approaches in education and research in intriguing ways that have not been easy to interpret or put into practice. Yet they have found some followers, and it is clear that the idea of the rhizome and its associated concepts are proving to be highly relevant in contemporary societies where networked learning is an increasingly vital part of education and training. An expanded vision of internet-based research permits exploring emergent and fluctuating activity initiated or experienced by social network users, including those who are harnessing such online networks for their professional development. Deleuze and Guattari (1987, 1994) invited readers to use their philosophical concepts in their own (research) contexts to inspire and create new and different ways of thinking and doing. According to May (2003, p. 140), Deleuze’s philosophy “is a practice whose point is not that of getting the right take on things but of making a contribution to our living”. However, these concepts can be experienced as inaccessible or even as exclusionary, deserving of prior training in philosophy to be adequately ‘applied’ in educational research (Strom, 2017). Certainly, Deleuzo– Guattarian concepts are dense and often carry a sub-text that is routed in earlier philosophical concepts and a French elitist education system (Harris, 2013, 2016). While these issues deserve careful consideration in educational research studies which draw on Deleuzo–Guattarian concepts, they should not deter researchers from deeply engaging with these concepts and developing their own readings of RL. Such multiple possible readings of RL could lead to different insights and more varied research in teacher professional development and beyond.

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Chapter 11

The Students’ Use of Mobile Instant Messaging Applications: Deleuze and Guattari’s Nomadism Analysis Frank Makoza

Introduction National student enrollment for higher education has increased over the past decade in South Africa. For instance, the number of students enrolled in higher education has increased from 983,703 in 2010 to 1, 313, 839 in 2020 (DHET, 2022). Despite the steady increase in student enrollment in South African universities, students coming to the university for the first time (first-year students) continue to experience challenges. Some of the challenges are lack of digital skills (especially for students coming from schools in rural areas), poor communication skills in the language of instructions and learning, e.g. English, limited financial resources, lack of exposure to opportunities, and limited support especially for students with special needs (e.g. mobility challenged and visually impaired) (Badat, 2010; Lekena & Bayaga, 2018). These challenges contribute to poor academic performance and the inability to continue with studies (Hundermark, 2018). This study argues that mobile technologies, for example, mobile instant messaging applications can support first-year students in addressing some of the challenges when they transition into university. Mobile instant messaging applications are used in work, personal, and leisure contexts and change the way people interact (Bidarra & Rusman, 2017). There can be an interconnection between social elements (students) and technical elements (mobile technologies) in an education setting (Aheto & Cronje, 2014; Taylor & Harris-Evans, 2018). Thus, mobile instant messaging applications have the transformation potential to support the becoming of students in new education setting. They support formal and informal patterns of learning where students can generate knowledge from diverse sources. They enrich students’ experience and learning in the context of higher education (Cronje, 2018; Vasilopoulos, 2016). F. Makoza (B) Cape Peninsula University of Technology, Cape Town, South Africa e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2023 M. S. Khine (ed.), Rhizome Metaphor, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-19-9056-4_11

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Previous studies on students’ use of mobile instant messaging applications in the South African context have used diverse theories, e.g. Social embeddedness (Bere & Rambe, 2019), Task Technology Fit (Bere, 2018), Technology Acceptance Model (Bere & Rambe, 2016), The Three Tree Rings Theory (Khoza, 2020), and Capabilities Approach (Rambe & Chipunza, 2013). The current study extends this debate and draws on the concept of nomadism from the work of Deleuze and Guattari (1987) to better understand the way first-year students use mobile instant messaging applications when they move to new education setting. Nomadism, rooted in Rhizomatic thinking, was considered ideal to unravel explanations of first-year students’ use of mobile instant messaging in supporting formal and informal learning in a new environment (Taylor & Harris-Evans, 2018). The study used a case of a South African university setting where first-year experience programs have received attention, and require further improvements and integration of technology (Hundermark, 2018; Nel et al., 2009; Pather et al., 2017; van Zyl, Gravett & de Bruin, 2012). The study was guided by the following research question: How does a mobile instant messaging platform support first-year students in their transition into university? The study may serve to inform academic administrators and lecturers in understanding the use of mobile instant messaging applications among first-year students and come up with better ways of integrating mobile technologies in the academic programs and processes. The rest of the chapter is organized as follows. The next section summarizes the background of the study. This is followed by a summary of the theoretical foundation of the study. Research methodology is highlighted. Findings from the studies are summarized followed by a discussion of the findings. Conclusions drawn from the study are presented at the end of the chapter.

Background to the Study Higher Education in South Africa South Africa has about 26 public universities that are categorized into traditional and universities of technologies. Universities play an important role in national development in South Africa. They support skills development required in the economic sectors, support innovation to address challenges in industries and communities, and offer services for research and development of products and services (Lee, 2017; Tankou epse Nukunah, Bezeuidenhout & Furtak, 2017). Further, universities are supporting the government to redress the apartheid past where there was racial segregation. The black people who constituted the majority were excluded from high-quality education and other economic opportunities (Anwana, 2022; Mzangwa, 2019). Hence, the government is supporting universities to achieve improved student enrollment, equal access to higher education, and attract more students to universities from previously disadvantaged communities (Badat, 2010; Pather et al., 2017).

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As part of the transformation in the higher education sector of South Africa, national student enrollment in higher education has increased. About 983,703 students enrolled in higher education institutions in 2010, and the number increased to 1, 313, 839 students in 2020 (DHET, 2022). This means that more students are now able to enroll in programs in traditional universities, universities of technologies, and private education providers. Part of this process involves the movement of students across provinces to places of higher learning. Students from previously disadvantaged communities (often rural areas) and low-resourced schools, e.g. Quantile 1– 3 (public non-paying fees schools) are most affected (Timmis et al., 2019). South African universities also host incoming students from other parts of the continent (e.g. Sub-Saharan Africa regions) to pursue higher education (Tali, 2010). The fist-year students bring along knowledge, skills, language, and expectations in the learning and teaching context. It is against this backdrop that universities have embarked on programs to support first-year students in the transition into higher education context (Mzangwa, 2019; van Zyl, Gravett & de Bruin, 2012).

First-Year Students’ Experience First-year students progress from secondary school into university and in some cases, students leave their homes for the first time and must adjust to a new way of life and learning in universities (Korstange et al., 2020; Gale & Parker, 2014). The transition into university is an important step in the academic journey of students and forms the foundation of successful academic and personal development. Universities arrange programs to welcome the students, register them, provide information about programs, accommodation, information about staff and lecturers in their programs, and extra-curricular activities, and introduce them to academic processes. Students are also introduced to academic support programs (e.g. writing skills and mentoring support) and social services (e.g. student wellness and health support) (Ozen & Yilmaz, 2019; Porteous & Machin, 2018). Other benefits of first-year student experience programs are better development of students’ interactions and engagement in teaching and learning, increased interaction with lecturers, opportunity to identify student’s needs and expectations, increased involvement in campus activities, and better prospects for persistence and ability to complete academic programs (Barefoot, 2000; Fitzpatrick et al., 2020). Students have opportunities to develop new social relationships that provide support in their academic journey (Porteous & Machin, 2018). Hence, first-year students’ experience programs address issues beyond academic programs and include student’s social bonding, social integration, and psychological well-being (Bano, Cisheng, Khan & Khan, 2019; Taylor & Harris-Evans, 2018). Despite the increase in student enrollment in higher education over the past decade in South Africa, first-year students continue to face challenges (Badat, 2010; Lekena & Bayaga, 2018; Pather et al., 2017). For instance, first-year students lack the digital skills that are necessary for their academic work. Students coming from low-resourced schools are mostly affected because they do not have experience in

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using computers and other learning technologies (Timmis & Muhuro, 2019). Firstyear students lack financial resources for additional materials and resources required for their studies, e.g. accommodation, transport, textbooks, and printing costs (Nel et al., 2009). While some students have access to study loans and bursaries through the National Students Financial Aid Scheme (NSFAS), there are also challenges to delays in payment of the grants which affect the students (Lekena & Bayaga, 2018). First-year students also face challenges in accessing support services because of limited awareness (Pather et al., 2017). Further, first-year students with special needs, e.g. visually impaired or mobility challenged, lack learning tools to support their activities. Studies also show that first-year students are affected by gender-based violence in higher education institutions (Anderson, 2022). These challenges may contribute to poor academic performance, high dropout rate, and students taking longer to complete their studies (Badat, 2010; Hundermark, 2018). Other authors have argued that mobile technologies can address some of the challenges that first-year students face (see Bere & Rambe, 2016; Porteous & Machin, 2018). For example, mobile instant messaging applications can support students in accessing information (both for academic and support services), establishing and maintaining relationships with their peers and academic staff, and supporting students to engage in learning activities and participate in extra calicular activities (Urien et al., 2019). Hence, there is increasing interest among higher education policy-makers and academic administrators in South Africa to integrate technology teaching and learning and transform higher education institutions (Bozalek et al., 2013; Cross & Adam, 2007). The next section summarizes mobile technologies in education.

Mobile Technologies in Education South Africa is one of the countries with high adoption of mobile technologies in Africa. It is estimated that 41 million people (out of 61 million people) have access to smartphones and 95% of smartphone users have access to the Internet (Digital, 2022). The improved access to mobile technologies has led universities to consider improving the delivery of academic programs. Universities are integrating mobile technologies including laptops, tablets, smartphones, and applications (e.g. learning management systems and mobile instant messaging applications) in teaching and learning to improve the delivery of programs and students’ performance (Bere & Rambe, 2016; Bozalek et al., 2013). The study concentrated on mobile instant messaging platforms because of their popularity among the younger generation and their being widely used in South Africa (Mpungose, 2020). This study responded to the call for more studies on understanding the use of mobile instant messaging platforms among students in education setting (Pimmer & Rambe, 2018; Tang & Hew, 2017). Mobile instant messaging platforms are applications used for communication that run on mobile devices including smartphones, tablets, laptops, etc. (So, 2016).

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Mobile Instant Messaging platforms allow real-time and asynchronous communication over the Internet. Users are able to communicate with a user or groups using text, voice, iconic forms (e.g. emojis, stickers, and memes), and audio recordings (So, 2016; Urien et al., 2019). Further, users can share content in the form of pictures, documents, and videos (Tang & Hew, 2017; Tang & Hew, 2020). Examples of mobile instant messaging platforms are WhatsApp, WeChat, Telegraph, Facebook Messenger, and Viber. Mobile instant messaging platforms have become popular means of communication for both personal and business uses. One of the advantages of mobile instant messaging platforms is that they provide cheaper means of communication as compared to other means of technologies, e.g. landline calls and simple message systems (SMS). Mobile instant messaging platforms are easy to use and provide instant communication. Mobile instant messaging platform users can use camera-enabled devices to stream or record events and share with other users (Urien et al., 2019). This study will focus on WhatsApp in the context of education because it is an application that is widely used in the context of South Africa (Digital, 2022). Studies have also shown that WhatsApp can be used in education context (Tang & Hew, 2017). Bere and Rambe (2019) assessed the use of WhatsApp among students. The study showed that WhatsApp was used in academic activities including sharing knowledge among students, and facilitating interactions between students and lecturers. WhatsApp has a technology-enhanced students socialization, cognitive capacity, and emotional and political capacities. The study also highlighted challenges for students when lecturers were not present all the time to respond to their queries (Bere & Rambe, 2019). In another study, Mpungose (2020) compared the use of Moodle (a Learning Management System) and WhatsApp amongst firstyear students at a South African university. The findings of the study indicated that students preferred to use WhatsApp for informal learning. The students interacted with their peers, shared content, and arranged meetings. Moodle was used in formal learning where students used the platform to access course materials and submit their assessments. The study recommended the integration of WhatsApp into formal learning because students find the application easy to use and convenient (Mpungose, 2020). Khoza (2020) also analyzed the habits of students when using WhatsApp at a South African university. The study showed that WhatsApp facilitated social, discipline, and education habits which affected their learning experience. Social habits were related to students’ use of WhatsApp to interact with their peers. This was happening even in face-to-face classes. Discipline habits were the use of WhatsApp among students to share formal content from their lecturers, e.g. mathematics and videos. Education habits were related to the values that students developed while using WhatsApp in relation to their disciple, e.g. independence, collaboration, and integrity (Khoza, 2020). Pimmer and Rambe (2018) noted the benefits of using WhatsApp in learning and teaching, e.g. improved communication and collaboration. The study argues that WhatsApp use has the potential to perpetuate contradictions that can affect relations between students and lecturers and delays in communication that can cause pressure on students. WhatsApp can also cause detachment if there are perceptions that conversations are private among the learners and lecturers. Students can

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also spend more time on conversations that are social in nature rather than academic (Pimmer & Rambe, 2018). Other challenges of WhatsApp use among learners are cyber bullying, loss of control since the application can be used for both learning and personal use, privacy issues, information overload, and misinformation (Gachago, Strydom, Hanekom, Simons, Walters, 2015). Hence, it is crucial to consider the potential limitation of WhatsApp use in the education setting. While there are studies that have looked at the use of WhatsApp in the context of teaching (e.g. Bere & Rambe, 2019; Khoza, 2020; Mpungose, 2020) and learning, few but growing studies have looked in detail at the perspective of first-year student experiences in terms of the transition into university context and changing of students’ identity, e.g. becoming (Strom, 2015). Understanding the perspective can support understanding the complexities of learning among first-year students and how the use of WhatsApp addresses some of the challenges among students. Further, the integration of technology in teaching and learning is also challenging (Bozalek et al., 2013; Pimmer & Rambe, 2018). The process requires an understanding of how technologies are used. Studies on mobile instant messaging platforms’ adoption for teaching and learning have mainly focused on lecturers (Gachago et al., 2015). This leaves a limited understanding of how students are using it for formal and informal learning. This study aims to address part of this knowledge gap.

Theoretical Perspective to the Study The study used rhizomatic thinking drawing on the work of Deleuze and Guattari (1987). It departs from simplistic, linear, and common sense thinking about social structures and activities. Instead, Deleuze and Guattari (1987) advocate nonlinear, unpredictable, and new ways of knowing. Central to rhizomatic thinking is the concept of rhizome (a plant that has multiple connections and grows in different and unpredictable directions). A rhizome has heterogeneous elements that are connected, and each connected element is always changing and constantly becoming. A rhizome can have both material and non-material elements, human and non-human elements, and these elements come together at different times during different activities. Thus, rhizomatic thinking can be ideal to understand complex learning situations and issues that can affect first-year students (Strom, 2015; Tillmanns et al., 2014). Extending the concept of rhizome is the concept of nomadism which means a way of life that deviates from the precepts of established social structures, e.g. hierarchy, authority, and social order. Nomads transgress and transform fixed rules of established social order (e.g. the state) and create identities that are always changing to adapt to new realities, not fixed but always moving, always accumulating new knowledge and having multiplicities and heterogenous of image. The nomads always move in a rhizomatic space that has no permanency and without restrictions (Deleuze & Guattari, 1987). Against this backdrop, the study used the following concepts to

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understand how first-year students use WhatsApp during their transition into university: Rhizomaticspace, deterritorialization, nomadic subjects, and nomadic resistance (Deleuze & Guattari, 1987; Tillmanns et al., 2014). As summarized in Table 11.1 below, rhizomatic space can be physical, psychological, and spiritual in nature and is opposite to structured space (e.g. space demarcated using lines, grids, and boundaries). It is continuous, uninterrupted, and unfolds in many possibilities of linkages or connections that facilitate transformation. WhatsApp use can facilitate a rhizomatic space where students can explore new ways of learning without limits that are usually imposed through formal and structured learning (Strom, 2015). Deterritorialization is the process where elements temporarily change because of the effects of other elements. This process is related to the reterritorialization of elements so that there is a reorganization that is not permanent. In other words, deterritorialization and reterritorialization activities support the becoming of elements. In the education setting, deterritorialization can be related to the interconnection of activities and processes for learning with the possibilities of breaking the norms to change the status quo. For example, MIM can support the becoming of first-year students to go beyond emulation of learning practices and form new ways of learning beyond the norms (Vasilopoulos, 2016). Nomadic subjects relate the process that generates creating and imaginative ways of thinking and without limits imposed by the social systems. Nomads can be perceived as becoming of a subject in rhizomatic spaces where they think and act without boundaries and perform multiple roles using their capacity to act (to affect others and being affected by others) (Bowden, 2015). In the education setting, mobile instant messaging applications can support first-year students in their becoming in assuming different roles that enhance their learning and experience (Aheto & Cronje, 2014). Nomadic resistance is when nomads question and do not conform to norms and practices in the Table 11.1 Summary of concepts of nomadism used in the study Concept

Description

Guiding question

Rhizomatic space

A physical, psychological, and spiritual space that is unstructured, continuously unfolding, and connected to many elements

How does use of WhatsApp among first-year students create uninterrupted connections of learning?

Deterritorialization

A process of forming new territories or homogenous components that support new practices in a social setting

How does use of WhatsApp among first-year students support breaking of norms and new ways of learning?

Nomadic subjects

The process of generating creative What are the identities that are and imaginative ways of thinking created among first-year students in social system and act in when using WhatsApp? multiple roles without limits

Nomadic resistance

Questioning the status quo to conditions that limit or dominate practices to initiate creative transformation and social change

How does use of WhatsApp among first-year students facilitate resistance to domination in the learning setting?

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rhizomatic spaces. This process may lead to new practices that address some of the obstacles of structures or hierarchies in the social context. This process can be linked to a war machine that opposes all forms of domination against established order or system (e.g. the state or capitalism). Resistance can trigger transformation and change of practices and processes in an education setting (Beck, 2016). Mobile instant messaging applications can support first-year students to resist forms of domination in education setting and support transformation of learning practices where their values, expectations, and knowledge are considered (Taylor & Harris-Evans, 2018).

Research Methodology Research Approach The study used a qualitative research approach to understand how first-year students used the Mobile Instant Messaging platform during their transition into university. The case study gathers an in-depth understanding of how first-year students used WhatsApp in an education setting (Longhofer et al., 2017). A case study was used because it supported an understanding of contextual and historical issues of the phenomena. Such an approach was similar to studies that have analyzed the use of WhatsApp in an education setting (e.g. Gachago et al., 2015; Mpungose, 2020; Bere & Rambe, 2016). The case study supported the collection of data from multiple sources.

Data Collection Qualitative data was collected for the study and included WhatsApp chat group and secondary data, e.g. official documents related to the university registration process and use of social media for teaching and learning. Purposeful sampling was used to identify a first-year course that was using WhatsApp for teaching and learning. WhatsApp chat group posts of undergraduate first-year students were collected from February 2020 to November 2020. The first-year students were informed of the purpose of the group, and they agreed to participate in the study. The participants were allowed to withdraw anytime from the WhatsApp chat group. The university ethics committee and the Head of the Department approved the study. The lecturer for the course also approved for the course to be part of the study.

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Data Analysis The study used content analysis (Erlingsson & Brysiewicz, 2017) to understand the way first-year students used WhatsApp. The two sets of data were imported into Atlas.ti (a qualitative data analysis software) to support the coding process. The application supported navigation between the WhatsApp chat group and documents. The data was read several times to understand the context of the discussions. The interesting points that were relevant to the study were noted. The sentences and paragraphs in the sample were assigned to codes. The codes were later grouped according to a sub-theme. The sub-themes were also grouped into themes that were related to the constructs of theory informing the study. A report was produced to answer the key question guiding the study. The process involved repeating the steps to ensure that a coherent storyline was developed.

Summary of Research Findings Rhizomatic Space The first-year students used WhatsApp in activities related to formal learning and informal learning. The formal learning activities were activities that were arranged by their lecturers and administrators as part of their introduction to the university. These include sharing information about registration, course timetable, lecturer contact details, and sharing course content. Student registration was an important step in the process of learning about the university: A student who registers at the University for the first time must submit satisfactory proof of his/ her identity as well as proof that s/ he complies with the prescribed admission requirements at registration (#DC1)

The students submitted their personal details and contact details. Further, the students were granted access to university systems for learning, capturing student records, and access to facilities such as student residency, library, and learning venues. The first-year students used WhatsApp to inquire and share information about the registration activities. Table 11.2 summarizes the codes on uses of WhatsApp for formal learning activities among first-year students. WhatsApp was also used in information learning activities. These were activities that were beyond teaching and learning but necessary for the students to succeed in their studies. For instance, WhatsApp was used in sharing information about bursaries, accommodation, travel information, and leisure activities. The students shared and obtained the information from their peers. Information about bursaries was important for the students in understanding the processes of obtaining information and support from NSFAS. The students’ allowances were used to buy textbooks, and

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Table 11.2 Summary of uses of WhatsApp in formal learning activities Codes

Description

Examples of statements

Course timetable

Course timetable indicating the day and times and venues for lectures

“Morning Everyone, could someone send the timetable please” “Anyone with a group D timetable please forward”

Lecturer’s contact details

Contact details for the lecturer

“Can I get sir’s personal email” “May I please have the lecturer’s email”

Venue information

Location of venues for teaching and learning

“Hey guys where is the venue for Accounting class” “People please help me here where is Sadernburg on campus”

Sharing course content

Sharing content that was posted on learning management system

“Can you share the link here when the lecturer send it? Because some of us are not registered yet” “Can some send me the Chap. 3 outline slide please”

Accessing facilities

Information about university facilities for teaching and learning

“Where do you print on campus?”

pay for accommodation and transport for students that were living in private and offcampus accommodation. The local students (e.g. who came from the province) were familiar with the context and shared with their peers who were coming from other provinces and other parts of the continent of Africa. This was important for the new students because not many were familiar with the transport system and knowledge about the location of the various campuses of the university. WhatsApp was also used to share information about leisure activities that were happening within and outside the university campus. It was interesting to note that students also contributed to the informal learning activities. For example, students with digital skills supported their peers in using university systems, e.g. on how to use Blackboard. The questions and answers on how to use the university systems were discussed on the WhatsApp chat group. In a way, WhatsApp was acting as an intermediary system that students with limited digital skills would learn, build self-confidence, and seek clarification on how to use the university systems. From the examples and explanation above, WhatsApp uses among the first-year students created a rhizomatic space where students were able to organize their activities during their transition into the university setting. The first-year students used WhatsApp in activities that were directly related to their course (summarized in

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Table 11.2) and other activities that were supporting their well-being for them to fully engage in their learning activities (summarized in Table 11.3). Here, WhatsApp use among the first-year students demonstrated connectedness of activities, e.g. moving from formal learning activities and personal activities indirectly related to learning.

Deterritorialization The first-year students used WhatsApp in the new ways of learning that were departing from the normal way of learning. The formal learning within the university setting includes the lecturer providing content as the main custodian of knowledge, lectures conducted in classrooms and computer laboratories via face-toface interactions, and the content of the course and communication from lecturer to students delivered using Blackboard (a learning content management system). Further, students used Microsoft Outlook to formally correspond with their lecturers and also have in-person meetings with their lecturers for additional learning support. WhatsApp supported informal learning that changed the ways of teaching and learning practices. The students also created knowledge that was useful in their learning activities. For instance, students used WhatsApp to share website links for additional material for the course. Students requested lectures to be conducted using WhatsApp because it was accessible via their smartphones and could participate in the classes remotely. While the content was made available on Blackboard, students preferred to access the content via WhatsApp because some of the students had not yet completed the registration process and had no access to Blackboard. As one student noted: “I just sent the stuff here because some of you only have WhatsApp data and do not have excess to Blackboard and Microsoft Outlook…”. Another student also commented on the convenience of sharing learning materials using WhatsApp: “Whoever sent those slides thank you so much because I do not have access to Blackboard here at home so thanks”. Thus, WhatsApp was providing alternative means of accessing learning materials for students who could not access university systems from remote locations, e.g. from home. In a way, WhatsApp was used as an intermediary system for the first-year students who had limited IT skills in using Blackboard and Microsoft Teams (for virtual collaboration when remote learning was introduced): “Microsoft teams does not give us problems … You can sign in with your student email because you already registered for Microsoft Outlook”. Further, the first-year students used WhatsApp for social support of their peers who were facing challenges. For instance, students offered support to their peers that required additional learning support: “If there is anyone who needs assistance with exercise 1–4 feel free to text me. I will explain to you …”. In some cases, the students also supported each other on social issues, e.g. encouraging each other to remain focused on their studies. From the explanation above, WhatsApp use among first-year students facilitated the creation of new territories that were connected to formal learning but departed

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Table 11.3 Summary of uses of WhatsApp in informal learning Code

Description

Examples of statements

Sources of information

Sharing learning content from external sources

“Ladies and gents with regards to accounting calculations. Please do check on YouTube for some tutorials”

Travel information

Sharing information for travel between campus and students’ residence

“Take a shuttle to Bellville you will find a shuttle to Southpoint there”

Accommodation information

Sharing information about student accommodation

“All residence students must vacate Student Housing facilities before the lockdown deadline of 26 March 2020 and return home so that they can abide by the presidential order as it will be impossible to render any services to students during this time. International students will be dealt with on a case by case basis by Student Services.”

Bursary information

Sharing information about bursary funds disbursement

“If you have an enquiry on your NSFAS please go to the NSFAS office tomorrow after class to go confirm what you are going through.”

IT technical support

Support from peers related to “I am having problems with my use of university systems blackboard password it says it is incorrect, but it was working even today it was working”

IT skills peer learning

Peer learning on how to use computers and university systems

“Anyone who is good with computers please indicate, I need assistance” “Someone please share the link. I can not open it using the link on Blackboard”

Alternative learning platform

Use of WhatsApp to support learning activities when university systems are not working

“Hey guys so I did get hold of the lecturer. And he said he has some technical issues with the IT department that he believes could be resolved by the time we have our next lessons. In the meantime we could join the WhatsApp where if any of us has a question can ask him directly from there.”

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from the conventional learning practices. The territories include learning spaces, content-sharing space, technical support space, and social support space. These territories were interconnected and facilitated new forms of practices of learning that were supporting the development of new knowledge. The first-year students used these spaces to enhance their learning experiences and settle into the new academic environment.

Nomadic Subjects The first-year students used WhatsApp to develop identities that gave meaning to themselves and the ability to act on learning practices and enhance their transition into the university. WhatsApp was used in supporting the creation of identities including registered students, unregistered students, local students, international students, and academically excluded students. Registered students were first-year students that had completed the registration process (submitted their personal information and paid the minimum amount of tuition fees) and were granted access to university facilities for their learning activities. The registration process was one of the steps that created a sense of belonging among the first-year students. Unregistered students were firstyear students that had not completed the registration process. The students could not access some of the services and facilities of the university: For example, the learning management system and email system that were used for formal learning activities. The students relied on WhatsApp to access learning content, obtain official information from lecturers and academic administrators, and communicate with their lecturers. Interestingly, there were also identities that were created related to access to technology resources. For example, students without devices and students with devices (Table 11.4). Local students were first-year students that were born in South Africa and had the privilege of obtaining support from the government. For instance, the local students obtained NSFAS bursaries and also loans to obtain computing devices when the university introduced remote learning due to the COVID-19 pandemic. The local students used WhatsApp to share contact details, and information about processes for obtaining loans and monthly stipends from NSFAS. Local marginalized students were students that had debt and could not obtain financial support from their parents or guardians because they came from low-income households. This group of students also participated in the discussion using WhatsApp and obtained support from their peers. The international students were first-year students from other African countries that were registered with the university. The international students were not eligible to access NSFAS services and in a way, they felt marginalized. For instance, students that had no computing devices (e.g. laptops and tablets) when the university introduced remote learning. The students relied on WhatsApp to support their learning activities. The academically excluded students were first-year students that had not made substantial academic progress in their courses or student that owed a debt to the university and had to appeal to be considered to continue with their

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Table 11.4 Examples of nomadic subjects for first-year students Code

Description

Examples of statements

Students without devices

Students enrolled at the university but had no personal devices (e.g. smartphones, tablets, and laptops) to use in teaching and learning and relied on university facilities, e.g. computer labs

“I am worried about these laptops….We cannot continue with studies while others have no equipment to study online learning…” “For now cannot they use their phones to learn up until we get the laptops?” “Some they do not have phones… No need to be offended… I am just sharing my opinion”

International students

Students that were not born in South Africa and could not access the government students’ support services

Local marginalized students Local students that owed the university debt and come from low-income households

“I just wanted to say that I was a bit lost and disappointed about some of us during the meeting, we are not all South African citizens” “I fully understand where you guys are coming from, you must also understand there are students from very disadvantaged backgrounds”

studies. The academically excluded students used WhatsApp to obtain information about the appeal process and obtain social support from their peers. From the information above, WhatsApp was crucial in supporting nomadic subjectivities of first-year students. The application supported students to assume different roles within their learning context, e.g. being in the university for the first time and having to deal with different learning situations. While there were diverse nomadic subjectivities, in a way the emerging identities were closely connected to learning and created opportunities for the first-year students to generate knowledge related to the subject and also personal development for academic life in a university setting.

Nomadic Resistance Nomadic resistance was demonstrated in activities that the first-year participated that were deviating from the norms of the university. Some such activities were student protests and resisting remote learning. The students’ protests were the result of students not being allowed to complete registration because of (a) not showing adequate funds to support their studies, (b) owing the university debt (from tuition and accommodation fees), and (c) poor performance in their studies. The first-year students were affected because some of their peers in their cohort could not register

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and other students (second- and third-year students) disrupted learning activities on campuses. It appeared that students’ registration and student debt were contentious issues. Student registration from the perspective of the university was summarized as follows: “A student must register annually during the set registration periods by paying the prescribed registration fees, making the required partial payment of fees, and signing the official registration form/ accepting the online rules electronically, thereby binding him/ herself to the rules of the university and undertaking to pay the prescribed fees on the due date(s). No person who is in arrears with the payment of any fees due to the university shall be registered as a student, unless by arrangement with the relevant official” (#DC1).

From the statement, students who had debts could not be registered with the university. This means that the students who were not registered could not access university facilities and learning systems. The unregistered students used WhatsApp to access information that was used in the process of registration. Further, the students used WhatsApp to share information and discuss issues that were affecting their registration process. The students’ protests on campuses affected the first-year students because some of the protest actions led to violence. The first-year students used WhatsApp to share information regarding their safety and interactions with their lecturers during the protests. Remote learning was introduced to minimize the risks of the COVID-19 virus. The university encouraged the use of multiple forms of communication between lecturers and students. Alternatives to in-person or face-to-face were promoted including the use of instant messaging applications (e.g. WhatsApp, Telegraph, and WeChat) promoting to ensure continuity of learning activities. However, some students did not have devices (laptops, smartphones, and tablets) and data bundles to participate in remote learning activities. During the discussions, students used WhatsApp to raise their concerns. While there were suggestions that loans will be provided for the students to acquire laptops and allocated data bundles, some students perceived that the implementation of the scheme was problematic. They believed that delivery of the laptops would take long, and that management should consider alternatives to speedup the delivery process. Thus, first-year students used WhatsApp to bring to attention issues that could affect their learning activities (Table 11.5). Nomadic resistance was demonstrated in the discussion among the first-year students. There were diverse views regarding the protests. Some first-year students felt that protests were not necessary because of the violence where resources were destroyed and the risk to the lives of other students. Other first-year students felt the plight of their fellow students (e.g. the students who came from low-income households and who had historical debt) who were not able to register because they owed the university tuition and accommodation fees. The protest action was perceived to be a way of bringing attention to the university management on issues that were affecting the students. Some of the students were sympathetic to fellow students but were not supporting the use of violence and vandalism to voice the concerns of the students.

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Table 11.5 Examples of codes for student safety and remote learning Code

Description

Students’ safety

Student safety related to protests “Guys, if and when you attend on campus class, please be careful. Protesting students do get reckless and selfish. Take great precaution. If you are driving, I strongly advise against parking on campus grounds. It is not a risk worth taking—at least not for this coming week”

Examples of statements

Student protests

Student safety related to protests “If you are going to shut down on campus the school then go to school Because no students will be allowed to enter the campus (by the protesting students) unless you want to be stoned”

Student protests

Student safety related to protests “I also blame the Institutions on campus and stance against because they don’t deliver violence and vandalism student needs. There are a lot of points that were mentioned, and they made sense. I now understand their reason for striking but I am against the vandalism and violence they did on Campus”

Rejecting remote learning Students rejecting remote learning because it was not a teaching and learning methodology they were used to

“It is hectic. This E-learning thing must be rejected. What will transpire is many people are going to fail because we all have our different learning methodologies. And many academic appeals will be rejected come January”

Rejecting remote learning Students rejecting remote learning because some students could not participate due to lack of devices and data bundles

“We want to let our constituents know that our position remains that we will forever reject the commencement of e-learning as long as it is exclusionary of even the smallest number of students. If not all students, then no student”

Discussion and Conclusions The study set out to analyze how first-year students used the mobile instant messaging application during their transition into a South African university of technology. The findings from the study showed that first-year students used WhatsApp for formal

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learning activities including sharing information for registration, course timetable, learning venues, lecturers contact details, university facilities, and course content. WhatsApp was also used for peer learning and as an intermediary system to learn about the university system and obtain support for the formal learning systems, e.g. Blackboard and Microsoft Outlook. The students also used WhatsApp in informal learning activities that had implications for their learning activities including accommodation, travel, bursary, IT technical support, and sharing alternative sources of information that could be used to improve their understanding of content introduced in class. The findings on formal learning using WhatsApp among first-year students were consistent with findings from similar studies. For instance, findings on the use of WhatsApp to share course content (e.g. slides and notes) using WhatsApp were similar to other studies (e.g. Bere, 2018; Bere & Rambe, 2016; Rambe & Chipunza, 2013) and communicating with peers and lecturers (e.g. Urien et al., 2019; Bozalek, Ng’ambi & Gachago, 2013). Interesting insights emerged from the informal learning where first-year students used WhatsApp to enhance their becoming in the new learning environment. This was demonstrated in the use of WhatsApp in creating new spaces for bringing their personal experiences and sharing their knowledge and skills related to learning and communication systems. For example, a space was created for students to learn and ask questions on how to access and use Blackboard and Microsoft Outlook. Similarly, a space was created where students asked about the registration process, bursary information, and accommodation. The spaces were connected to formal learning spaces but created new ways of learning that were not previously acknowledged as argued by Strom (2015). Another contribution of the study is the emergence of different nomadic subjects that were created when using WhatsApp among the first-year students. Previous studies often highlighted the single identity of university students (e.g. as students who used WhatsApp to support learning activities) (Bano, Cisheng, Khan & Khan, 2019; Pimmer & Rambe, 2018; Fitzpatrick et al., 2020). The study demonstrated that WhatsApp use among first-year students supported the emergence of multiple roles that were meaningful to the students and supported creative thinking in addressing university content-setting issues. Examples of the first-year students’ identities that emerged in the study were registered students, unregistered students, local students, international students, local marginalized students, students with devices, and students without devices. These identities supported the students to look at the situations from diverse perspectives and enhance their learning experiences (Aheto & Cronje, 2014; Taylor & Harris-Evans, 2018). Nomadic resistance was also useful among the first-year students where students were able to raise issues with academic management: For example, the resistance related to the introduction of remote learning during the COVID-19 pandemic. The study showed that the needs of students were taken for granted, e.g. students without devices and international students who could not access government support. WhatsApp facilitated the discussions to raise the concerns of students and structural arrangements that would affect their learning activities. Thus, management became aware of first-year students’ issues around remote learning and opened up new ways

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of thinking to improve remote learning (Clarke & Parsons, 2012; Tillmanns et al., 2014). The study offers useful insights on possible avenues for further research: (a) the study used a case of a university of technology in South Africa. This context is perceived to attract students that have not been successful to enroll in traditional universities, from marginalized communities and focuses on practical oriented or hard skills teaching, unlike traditional universities that attract affluent students and contrate of developing critical skills for white-collar jobs (Pather et al., 2017; Tankou epse Nukunah, Bezeuidenhout & Furtak, 2017). Further research can be done to compare our findings in the context of traditional university: (b) the study considered the perspective of first-year students only. Further studies can validate our fundings and compare insights from both the lecturers and academic administrators involved in first-year experience programs, and the first-year students. In conclusion, the study analyzed the use of WhatsApp among first-year students when transitioning into a university of technology in South Africa. Using the concept of nomadism (Deleuze & Guattari, 1987), the findings showed that first-year students used WhatsApp in imaginative and creative ways beyond formal learning practices of face-to-face and classroom-based learning. WhatsApp facilitated their becoming in a new education setting by creating spaces where their knowledge and experiences were shared with peers in creating new knowledge, creating meaningful identities that allowed the first-year students to perform multiple roles, and resisting forms that were not adequately meeting their learning needs. The study can be useful for lecturers and academic administrators in understanding how WhatsApp is used among first-year students so that the application can be effectively integrated into the first-year students’ experience programs.

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Chapter 12

Exploring Rhizomatic Thinking in Clinical Reasoning Saroj Jayasinghe

Introduction Reductionism and holism are two paradigms in science that have co-existed for many centuries (Capra & Luisi, 2016; Fortunato et al., 2018). Contemporary science is dominated by the former and its mental models (Johnson-Laird, 1980; Jayasinghe, 2011; Kaplan, & Valles, 2019). An early proponent was Descartes (born in 1637) when he proposed a process of inquiry that divides each problem into its smallest parts, and studies and resolves them individually. Mental models of health and illness implicitly used during clinical practice are predominantly based on reductionism and mechanistic explanations. An example of a reductionist approach is to narrow down the underlying reason for the COVID pandemic to mutations of the spike proteins on the surface of the SARS-CoV-2 virus that enables it to dock and invade human cells. A reductionist approach is to identify molecules that block this process of attaching, or to produce vaccines that stimulate antibodies against the spike proteins. This methodology has its merits and enables vast advances in several disciplines.

Systems Thinking Complementing the reductionist approach is holism that uses systems thinking. Rather than focusing or converging towards its component parts, a system views an entity in a holistic manner and describes in terms of mutual interactions of its parts with each other. The dynamic nature of interactions, its feedback loops, and self-regulation are considered crucial to understanding the system. The emerging S. Jayasinghe (B) University of Colombo, Colombo, Sri Lanka e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2023 M. S. Khine (ed.), Rhizome Metaphor, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-19-9056-4_12

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properties of a system are more than a simple summation of the individual components of the system. There are several descriptions of a system, depending on the dynamic nature of its interactions with its component parts (e.g. linear or non-linear) and the extent to which it is ‘open’ to the external environment (Snowden & Boone, 2007). They proposed the Cynefin framework (pronounced ku-nev-in, a Welsh word) to describe the contexts or types of systems. Briefly, a system could be ‘simple’ characterized by stability and clear easily understood cause-and-effect relationships. Complicated contexts have multiple correct or right answers, and the relationships between causes and effects are visible to a few, i.e. the realm of ‘known unknowns.’ In a complex context of a system (or a complex adaptive system), the situations are dynamic, right answers cannot be derived, it is unpredictable, and why things happen are understood only in retrospect. Patterns, however, emerge. In a chaotic system, relationships between cause and effect are impossible to determine, and we are in the realm of unknowables and it is important to act to establish order and to transform the situation from chaos to complexity.

Systems Thinking and the Human Body Systems thinking has a more holistic view of the human body and conceptualizes it to consist of several closely linked organ systems. These systems are embedded within the body, constantly interacting with each other, and ‘open’ to the external environment. These interactions are through a diversity of pathways. These include chemical interactions (e.g. carbon dioxide accumulation in blood from lung damage causing vasodilatation in peripheral tissues), diffusion of proinflammatory chemicals through tissue planes leading to a sympathetic exudation of fluids, e.g. lung effusions, interactions between brain and gut through neuronal connections (e.g. autonomic nerves), distal effects of hormones such as the pro-catabolic effects of cortisone released by the adrenal cortex, and inflammation of tissues distal to the site of primary insult, mediated through antibodies and cytokine pathways. These subsystems lack persisting stable hierarchical structures and instead have multiple levels of heterarchical interrelations and interactions. The relative importance of each pathway changes with time. For example, during a fear response, cardiovascular, musculoskeletal, and nervous systems would predominate over the kidneys (Kresh, 2006). In the acute situation, the reduced urine output is relatively less important for the response, while there is an increase in heart rate and blood pressure mediated via the autonomic system. The latter will be dampened by the baroreceptors that sense an increase in blood pressure. The subsystems (organ systems in this instance) also demonstrate indistinct and fuzzy borders and overlap with one another, e.g. the immune system reaches all parts of the body through body fluids. The processes in the body’s physiologic state are also characterized by non-linear relationships such as heart rate variability that are not found in mechanistic systems.

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Systems Thinking, Disease States, and Clinical Reasoning We can conceptualize clinical features of disease states as emergent properties of the human body. Derangements in one organ system influences many other organ systems (and the reverse in the form of positive or negative feedback). A disease state is unique to an individual though we define it by the features that are common. As a result, we observe common patterns of features in any human body affected by a particular pathogen or dysfunction or injury. These emergent states with the same set of features seen across many individuals are termed as a disorder or a ‘disease’ (Jayasinghe, 2012). From this systems approach, the septic shock could be described as an emergent property of a CAS (in this instance, the human body) in which a complex interplay of non-linear interactions with feedback (Jayasinghe, 2016). As a result of unique underlying features or genetic predispositions, an individual who has suffered from septic shock may predominantly have acute kidney injury, while another develops a clinical picture dominated by acute respiratory distress syndrome. Clinical reasoning is defined as “the cognitive process that is necessary to evaluate and manage a patient’s medical problems” (Barrows & Tamblyn, 1980). There are two categories described: A relatively slow analytical and deliberative path, (i.e. the hypothetico-deductive approach) and a rapid, intuitive non-analytical approach involving pattern recognition (Kahneman, 2011). At the bedside, the clinician invariably uses a combination of these approaches. Mental models in the hypothetico-deductive approach use linear reasoning, or less commonly having a few branches in an arboreal hierarchical structure. This is exemplified by lists of differential diagnoses or problem lists that are generated at the bedside, to aid clinical management. In contrast, patterns of clinical features that are recognized are better represented by diagrammatic methods, such as concept maps, Mind Maps, and Clinical Reasoning Map (CRM). They have an arboreal structure having multiple branches and links across multiple nodes such as diseases, disorders, clinical features, and pathogenetic mechanisms (Jayasinghe, 2016). These patterns are based on sensations, most commonly visual or auditory (e.g. complex combination of murmurs heard on auscultating the precordium) rather than verbal. A map indicates multiple connections across areas of interest. CRM as a tool helps to trace the path of a patient’s condition as it evolves. It can be described as a visual representation of systems science at the bedside. The interconnections so visualized are almost instantaneously or intuitively understood by the expert clinician. There is no strict hierarchy of concepts seen in concept maps. Nor is there a central point as described in Mind Maps. This enables the CRM to show the evolution of the disease states over time. It is a systems approach to describe a complex clinical state of a patient.

Clinical Reasoning and Rhizomatic Thinking The present paper extends the systems thinking described in the previous section, to rhizomatic thinking, and applies the metaphor of a rhizome to view complex

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clinical scenarios. Rhizomatic thinking was originally applied to philosophy, arts, and culture, and less commonly to the natural sciences (Colombat, 1991; DouglasJones & Sariola, 2009). Rhizomatic thinking views reality to have widespread connectivity, growing and spreading with no beginning or end. In the case of clinical cases, this would mean recognizing the importance of the interactions between the person and the physical and social environments. As with the arts and culture, a clinical diagnosis could be approached from multiple points of entry. Points of entries could be derangements in any of the organ systems or from the physical or social environment. Rhizomatic thinking helps to deepen the understanding of the interconnected nature of cases, and the multiple pathogenic pathways, generate differential diagnoses, and predict future prognostic pathways. As with the metaphor of a rhizome, clinical reasoning has no beginning or end and ‘causative’ factors lead to disease states that themselves become ‘causes’ for another set of states. For example, a person having hyperglycemia due to diabetes may, with time, develop a neuropathy. The latter, with ill-fitting footwear and repeated minor trauma, leads to foot ulceration. Infection of the ulcer would then lead to cellulitis in the areas surrounding the foot ulcer. Severe infection accompanying atherosclerotic disease could lead to gangrene of the toes. A disease state (in this instance diabetes) emerges from causal factors, and it becomes a causal factor to another (i.e. evolves to develop a neuropathy) which in turn is a causal factor for ulceration and cellulitis that could lead to gangrene. The clinical reasoning process is often modularized to disciplines though a ‘generalist’ will be able to make connections from one condition, usually dealt with within a particular specialty, to another. It can take a more divergent path and extend to the social environment. For example, the disease states of a patient having diabetes as described in the previous section would have negative impacts on the functioning of the patient as a member of society. His productivity would suffer due to acute illness, and there would be a decline in his earning capacity. Society would compensate for his loss of productivity and also require other members of society to provide extra care. There could be adjustments in the immediate built environment, to enable him to function despite his amputation. In this patterning of disease states, there is no particular hierarchy, which is a feature of rhizomatic thinking. However, the clinical reasoning process will reveal a particular directionality. For example, diabetes leads to peripheral neuropathy and not the reverse i.e. because peripheral neuropathy does not lead to diabetes. This dynamic process of clinical reasoning will always be unfinished as the person ‘recovering’ from the gangrene will develop another set of conditions e.g. amputation of the foot that will require rehabilitation. As with rhizomatic thinking, the process is subject to constant revisions, as new issues could emerge, e.g. a distressing sensation of ‘phantom limb’ in place of the amputated limb. We observe analogies with cultural evolution, as the patient’s clinical state changes and evolves without central control. It is an acephalous process, going through a network of a rhizome, having the potential to branch out, unlike a rigid arboreal tree-like hierarchical structure or pathways.

12 Exploring Rhizomatic Thinking in Clinical Reasoning Genetics

Diabetes

197 Sepsis

Peripheral neuropathy

Ulcer

Gangrene

Amputation

Environment

Loss of productivity

Disabled

Phantom limb

Social impacts

Ecosystem

Impact on planet and species

Fig. 12.1 A part of the rhizome related to the case

Rhizomatic thinking recognizes signifying ruptures. These are abilities to grow again through expansions, variations, conquests, captures, and offshoots rather than reproduction. These breaks in connections are known as deterritorialization and their reforming as reterritorialization. Clinical reasoning exhibits this process by diseases developing certain consequences (e.g. neuropathy, cellulitis, and gangrene). The infection could be controlled with amputation of the limb and antimicrobials, but lead to a new issue of disablement such as a phantom limb. The process is dynamic and within a set of parameters like an infinitely modifiable map. The reasoning process could begin as neuropathy with diabetes as its cause, or from the point of cellulitis and working backwards through the causative links. This illustrates the ability of clinical reasoning to have multiple entrances and exits, rather than a trace of a map or a structural or generative model (Fig. 13.1).

Implication of Applying Rhizomatic Thinking to Clinical Reasoning Applying rhizomatic thinking has several implications for clinical reasoning. The rhizomatic mental model of clinical reasoning views disease states as persisting and remerging and reimaging the person and his or her environment. It could have impacts on the immediate household, and even on a very small scale extend to the wider community, the nation, or to the rest of the world. An example of the latter would be if a limb amputation was performed on a globally recognized political leader of a nation.

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His or her absence from work could have international political impacts. In contrast, an ordinary citizen undergoing a limb amputation would have impacts that are less widespread, e.g. adding to the budget allocations for a disability allowance. Thus, at a philosophical level, a disease state even in an individual, could impact the wider human species and the planet. For example, the change in lifestyle of a person losing a limb has long-term impacts on the functioning of a particular community. This in turn could theoretically have at least a minor influences on the whole social environment of that particular country, the planet, and the species. In the case of formulating a plan to provide care, rhizomatic thinking shifts emphasis from a biomedical model to include links between the ill person, the built environment, society, ecosystems, and the wider planet. It adds to the growing corpus of novel complex thinking such as Edgar Morin’s whole systems thinking and synergetics and may become a novel approach to explore theortical aspects of clinical practice.

Rhizomatic Thinking, Pedagogy of Clinical Reasoning and Connectivism Mental models based on rhizomatic thinking would require a novel pedagogy. Let us consider the example of a person having hyperglycemia due to diabetes described in the previous section. He developed peripheral neuropathy, foot ulceration, infection of the ulcer leading to cellulitis, and gangrene of the toes requiring amputation. The process of exploring and learning from this scenario could begin with causal factors for diabetes or clinical features related to neuropathy or the treatment of cellulitis and gangrene. Learning could begin from the societal impacts of limb amputations and the changes in the built environment that are required for an inclusive society. This could even be a trigger for exploration and discussion on the rights of access for the differently abled. Exploring a topic using the current structure of resource materials such as textbooks would be limited. Rhizomatic thinking will require one to cross boundaries that are often sub-headings in textbooks: frameworks such as etiology, epidemiology, clinical features, investigations, management, and preventive measures. Instead, learners would have to search and capture different segments of knowledge or skills from a range of texts or resources to build his or her own rhizome of knowledge. Using tools such as CRM would enable one to depict the knowledge acquired and links to the networks that have them. These links to networks to gather knowledge residing in them, requires the ability to traverse connections in a networks and sift through large volumes of data flowing in them. To enhance their capabilities, learners require a novel pedagogy based on Connectivism, a learning theory that is more appropriate for the intensely networked digital world (Siemens, 2004).

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References Barrows, H. S., & Tamblyn, R. M. (1980). Problem-based learning: An approach to medical education. Springer Publishing Company. Capra F. & Luisi, P. L. (2016). The systems view of life (A Unifying Vision) Cambridge University Press; 1st edition (August 1, 2016). Colombat, A. P. (1991). A thousand trails to work with Deleuze. SubStance, 20, 10–23. Douglas-Jones, R. C., & Sariola, S. (2009). Rhizome yourself : experiencing Deleuze and Guattari from theory to practice. Rhizomes, 19 (Summer). http://www.rhizomes.net/issue19/sariola.html. Fortunato, S., Bergstrom, C. T., Börner, K., Evans, J. A., Helbing, D., Milojevi´c, S., Petersen, A. M., Radicchi, F., Sinatra, R., Uzzi, B., Vespignani, A., Waltman, L., Wang, D., Barabási, A. L. (2018). Science of science. Science. 359(6379), eaao0185. https://doi.org/10.1126/science.aao 0185. Jayasinghe, S. (2011). Conceptualising population health: From mechanistic thinking to complexity science. Emerging Themes in Epidemiology., 8, 2. https://doi.org/10.1186/1742-7622-8-212 Jayasinghe, S. (2012). Complexity science to conceptualize health and disease: Is it relevant to clinical medicine. Mayo Clinic Proceedings, 87(4), 314–319. Jayasinghe, S. (2016). Describing complex clinical scenarios at the bed-side: Is a systems science approach useful? Exploring a novel diagrammatic approach to facilitate clinical reasoning. BMC Medical Education, 16, 264. https://doi.org/10.1186/s12909-016-0787-x Johnson-Laird, P. N. (1980). Mental Models in Cognitive Science. Cognitive Science, 4, 71–115. Kahneman, D. (2011). Thinking fast and slow. Straus and Giroux. Kaplan, J. M., & Valles, S. A. (2019). Reflecting on what philosophy of epidemiology is and does, as the field comes into its own: Introduction to the Special Issue on Philosophy of Epidemiology. Synthese. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11229-019-02252-3. Kresh, J. Y. (2006). Integrative systems view of life: Perspectives from general systems thinking. In T. S. Deisboeck & J. Y. Kresh (Eds.), Complex systems science in biomedicine (pp. 3–29). Springer. Snowden, D. J., & Boone, M. E. (2007). A leader’s framework for decision-making. Harvard Business Review., 85, 68–76.

Index

A Actor-Network Theory (ANT), 2, 7–12, 14, 16, 18, 19, 21 Affect, 72, 77, 79, 85, 86, 90 Anti-binarism, 4 Asignifying rupture, 1, 3, 8, 14, 53, 54, 57, 59, 61, 64–67, 115, 197

Deleuze and Guattari, 1, 3–5, 11, 27, 72, 73, 75, 77, 80, 83–85, 90, 96–99, 107, 112, 115, 123, 158–160, 162, 163, 169, 174, 178 Deterritorialization, 1, 4, 19, 20, 96, 98, 104, 116, 123, 130, 179, 183, 197 Diversity, 2, 99, 140, 144, 145, 153, 194

B Becoming, 1, 3, 4, 71, 72, 77, 78, 85, 86, 90, 94, 96, 98, 100, 106, 114, 123, 136, 146, 149, 159, 161, 163, 165–168, 178, 179, 189, 190 Belonging, 96, 158, 185

E Early childhood pedagogy and curriculum, 90 Education, 1–5, 8, 12, 14, 18, 21, 26, 27, 31, 33, 41, 71, 77, 90, 97–99, 105, 111, 118, 119, 127–132, 134–138, 140, 141, 144, 152–154, 157, 160–162, 164, 169, 173–180, 190 Educational training programs, 4, 144–146

C Clinical, 5, 193, 195–198 Co-designing, viii Communities, 2, 4, 28–34, 37, 38, 42–44, 98, 102–105, 107, 112, 115, 116, 118–120, 122–124, 139–141, 143, 144, 148, 153, 154, 157, 158, 160–162, 174, 175, 190, 197 Communities of learning practice, 3, 93, 94, 96, 98–107 Concept of rhizome, 157–161, 163–165, 178 Contextualized and Significant (CCS) approach, 144–147, 151, 152

D Decentralization, 4, 129, 130, 140

F First-year students, 4, 173–183, 185–190 Framework, 3–5, 8, 55, 100, 103, 106, 112–114, 122, 123, 129, 134, 166, 194, 198

H Higher education, 40, 100, 173–176

I Inclusive education, 143, 144, 146, 147, 150–152, 154 International studies, 138

© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2023 M. S. Khine (ed.), Rhizome Metaphor, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-19-9056-4

201

202 L Laboratory, 3, 93, 94, 96–99, 102, 106, 107, 183 Learning, 1–5, 7–9, 11–16, 19–21, 25–43, 53, 54, 67, 71, 73, 77, 79, 84, 86, 88, 90, 91, 93, 94, 96–107, 111, 113, 115–123, 127, 129–133, 135–141, 144–146, 148, 150–154, 158, 160–164, 166, 169, 173, 175–190, 198 Learning styles, 145, 146, 150, 151, 153, 154 M Metaphor, 1, 4, 5, 8, 26, 27, 29, 37, 44, 96, 112, 113, 115, 123, 149, 158–161, 163–165, 195, 196 Methodology, 3, 4, 8, 29, 33, 94, 107, 141, 144, 148, 152, 162, 165–168, 174, 188, 193 Mobile instant messaging applications, 4, 173, 174, 176, 179, 188 Moodle, 3, 28, 53, 55, 57–61, 64, 65, 177 MS Power BI., 54, 56, 58 Multiplicity, 1, 2, 4, 8–11, 14, 19, 20, 73, 78, 85, 88, 90, 115, 118, 119, 123, 128, 129, 132, 137, 138, 146, 147, 149, 159, 164–166, 178 My Unisa, 53, 54, 57–61, 64–66 N Networks, 55, 100, 106, 112, 115, 117–119, 122, 136, 146, 149–151, 157, 158, 160–162, 166, 169, 196, 198 Nomadic, 1, 3, 4, 27, 93, 94, 96, 98–100, 103, 105–107, 112, 113, 116–120, 122, 123, 179, 186, 187, 189 Non-human agency, 7, 8, 21 O Online discussion forum, 3, 53–59, 61, 64–67 P Postmodernism, 127–129, 131, 133–137, 140, 141

Index Postqualitative learning, 21 Professional development, 25, 26, 31, 35, 37, 134, 140, 157, 166–169

R Reasoning, 5, 43, 195–197 Rhizomatic, 3–5, 7, 13, 16, 19, 27, 29, 37, 43, 53–56, 67, 72, 74, 83, 87, 88, 90, 94, 96, 98, 100, 104, 122, 123, 128, 129, 132, 133, 137, 138, 140, 141, 146–150, 161–164, 168, 174, 178–180, 182, 195–198 Rhizomatic learning, 1–4, 26, 27, 37, 42–44, 73, 90, 93, 96, 103, 105–107, 112, 113, 116, 118–120, 122, 123, 133, 138, 140, 147, 149, 150, 152, 157, 158, 160–165, 169 Rhizome, 1–5, 7–12, 14–16, 19–21, 26, 27, 33, 38, 44, 53, 73, 76, 90, 96, 99, 112, 113, 115, 116, 118, 123, 128–130, 132, 149, 158–161, 163, 165–167, 169, 178, 195, 196, 198

S Subjectivity, 4, 71, 165, 186 Systems, 53, 96, 100, 103, 106, 112, 115, 117, 119, 120, 127, 129, 131, 133, 135, 137, 138, 140, 141, 160, 169, 176, 179, 181–185, 187, 189, 193–195, 198

T Teacher professional development, 4, 158, 167, 169 Technology affordances, 27 Thinking, 4, 5, 7, 12, 13, 32, 43, 53, 72, 84, 87, 88, 90, 96–99, 105, 107, 113, 123, 128, 136, 146–148, 151, 159–169, 174, 178, 179, 190, 193–198 Twitter, 4, 28, 157, 163, 166–168

V Virtual Learning Environments, 34, 161