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Rhizomatic learning uses the botanical metaphor of the rhizome to describe the complex and often messy nature of learning.

Where did rhizomatic learning come from?

The concept of rhizomatic learning is partially informed by the work of post-structuralist French thinkers Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari.

Rhizomatic learning takes its name from the rhizome, a type of plant stem which Deleuze and Guattari believed provided an interesting contrast with rooted plants. In her work Deleuze, Education, and Becoming, Inna Semetsky summarizes the pertinent differences of the rhizome:

The underground sprout of a rhizome does not have a traditional root. There is a stem there, the oldest part of which dies off while simultaneously rejuvenating itself at the tip. The rhizome’s renewal of itself proceeds autopoietically: the new relations generated via rhizomatic connections are not copies, but each and every time a new map, a cartography. A rhizome does not consist of units, but of dimensions and directions. 

For Deleuze and Guattari the rhizome formed a model for an epistemological alternative to Western rationalism