Rhizomatic Learning Environments: Possibilities for Education

Abstract

Schools’ routine starts with exhaustive planning including a list of procedures to be attended, a school program to be addressed, a list of skills and abilities to be developed and many rules to be followed. Struggling with these practices is not a privilege for novice teachers, and it is easy to fall into the trap of standardization, copying and pasting former classes, making only small adjustments to accommodate new content, or avoiding changes whatsoever. Embracing a rhizomatic learning environment with no patterns and with a constant and natural need for changes, doesn’t seem realistic. For many educators, the educational system is better understandable and more comfortable with patterns, repetition, and standards because ‘we tend to be uneasy with chaos and chance’ (Gilovich, T. (1991). How we know what isn’t so: The fallibility of human reason in everyday life. Free Press.). This chapter is a summary of a doctoral thesis that embraced the idea of differences to create a virtual learning and teaching program to help educators to recognize unconscious bias, acknowledge and understand the beauty of diversity (including disabilities) and promote inclusion as a part of our daily mission, without setting patterns or promise miracle receipts. Educational processes can be improved, but they are no ‘preestablished paths’ (Deleuze, G., & Guattari, F. L. (1987). A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia (B. Massumi, Trans.).) to be followed. Nonetheless, it is possible to be prepared, have pathways in mind, plan ahead for different learning profiles, and embrace diversity as an unsolvable yet beautiful part of our learning environment.