I like to think before writing a post, and etmooc has given me much to think about over the past few weeks. Rather than quickly reflect and write about a concept I’ve been drifting laterally – thinking about these concepts and ideas and how they apply to me and my students. How do these things work within music education?

Today I’ll talk about rhizomatic learning. I understand the concept of rhizomatic learning – the idea that learning doesn’t necessarily happen in a set order – that it can grow form the community and grow laterally. Reminds me of the thinking in Persig’s Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. If you haven’t read this book I highly reccomend it – it changed my life and I’ve read it several times. An unknown blogger eloquently explains Persig’s idea of lateral drift and lateral knowledge here on a blog called Lateral Drifting.

I also think of music (of course) when I think of this idea of rhizomatic learning – of that idea of lateral knowledge and learning  that stems from the community – not the single teacher. In music I act as a conductor and a coach, but most of my students’ learning comes from within and from the ensemble. Musicians train and practice – they don’t study. And they work together in tightly knit ensembles shaping sound until they achieve that ultimate idea of musical expression. They must do this together – they must work together and eventually achieve a unified goal and understanding of the ensemble’s “inner vision” for a work of music.

They learn from one another too. I have very advanced students and students who are just learning on their instruments. Those beginners learn more from just sitting next to a more experienced musician than from group lessons. I also learn from my students. I have some amazing students who study privately with college professors and professional musicians. they bring their training and knowledge and skill back to our school band room and share it with me and their peers. If that’s not rhizomatic learning I don’t know what is!

Isn’t that rhizomatic learning? This idea of group or social learning has been alive for years in the music classroom – but we call it an ensemble. Musicians never learn from just a single person either,  they listen to many musicians and copy their styles and practices. They pass on their knowledge and skills to others as mentors and teachers, and they are constantly looking to others for critique and ideas for self-improvement and better musicianship. How many classroom teachers take their entire class out on a trip to another school so that other teachers, judges, and other students can judge their own students’ collective work? We do that in music all the time – students perform at festivals, they listen to other students perform and are constantly learning about music and growing as musicians – as an ensemble. And I think there’s a key word here – collective work – for while musicians train themselves and grow individually as musicians, they must always work collectively – even a solist needs to work with an accompanist or a small ensemble – we are always working together towards the same musical goals and achievements, but always coming back to the ensemble.

Moving Forward

I’d like to think more about the concepts of rhizomatic learning and think about how they could work in my ensemble to help grow student ownership. How could I use it in some of my other classes? In AP Music Theory I cannot really see it working – but in Arts Business and Technology? Electronic Music? Classes where I want students to really focus on their own learning goals and art forms, but also grow together as a class?