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.
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.
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?
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 🙂
Kate, I love your diagrams on what’s going on beneath the surface of the soil. I’ve been listening to a number of wonderful books (fiction and non-fiction) about forests and trees lately, and it has made me think a lot more about that living world under the soil and the what we can sense (see, smell, hear) that is above the soil and what we miss if we don’t use other conceptual and scientific and spiritual tools to see below. But back to the conceptual analogy of rhizomes to ways of thinking about complexity… My engagement with academia (from the perspective of museum environments) is most often at the messy edges of curriculum; in my teaching and learning environment, the messy is embraced and ‘becomes’ the curriculum, and by working through the mess, by creating an environment in which some degree of chaos is OK, we are able to go places that subject-focussed curriculum can’t. So, in that way rhizomes work for me, but I can see that in other contexts, they would be very frustrating!
Lelan dateove the use of metaphors and images to convey your meaning and reflections in this post Kate!
Oops – the ‘Anti-spam word’ got concatenated into my comment 🙂