Month: April 2021

Everything is happy underground

Some of my research is involved in understanding the mechanics, diversity and consequences of microorganisms in the soil. I have some formidable colleagues who work in this area, and I wouldn’t call myself a soil scientist. However the workings of yeast, bacteria and fungi in communities is a source of constant delight and I am happy to use this ecosystem to test my theories and expand knowledge.

Happy underground indeed. Some new concepts and challenges in microbial ecology of soils. Here, the hierarchy of challenges is placed under Distribution, Function and Prediction.
Figure from Soil Microbial Biogeography in a Changing World: Recent Advances and Future Perspectives
Haiyan Chu, Gui-Feng Gao, Yuying Ma, Kunkun Fan, Manuel Delgado-Baquerizo
mSystems Apr 2020, 5 (2) e00803-19; DOI: 10.1128/mSystems.00803-19

This week, I was reading about rhizomatic learning and after a discussion with Thomas, decided to compare and contrast with Bloom’s Awesome Taxonomy. Let’s face it, Bloom’s structures underpinned my learning about the structure of teaching and learning, and I have spent many happy hours in meetings discussing the use of action verbs to describe subject and course intended learning outcomes.

Benjamin Bloom should be thanked for providing fodder for extensive discussions about verbs in T&L meetings.
Image credit: Wikipedia (https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/d/d4/Benjamin_Bloom_photo.jpg/220px-Benjamin_Bloom_photo.jpg)

But are they easily comparable?

Colourful, edged and categorised- teaching skills and conceptualising learning based on a pyramid. Build one on top of the other, gather skills and apply to higher learning attributes. Image courtesy of Vanderbilt Uni (Creative Commons License) accessed via https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/79/Blooms-Taxonomy-650×366.jpg
Rhizomatic learning represented as interconnected nodes from fungal mycelia. Messy, unpredictable, monochrome, no beginning and no end.
Richard Giblett (2009). ‘Mycelium Rhizome’. Pencil on paper. 120 x 240 cm, $11,000 incl gst, unframed Retrieved from: http://aymed.wordpress.com/

The messiness of the rhizome does not fit well with the structural approaches to teaching and learning within the academy. But for higher level courses, and to meet complex graduate attributes, there maybe some more to learn in this space!

My colleague, Heather Gaunt and I will be exploring in more detail in our presentation coming up in week 6. Stay tuned 🙂