The Rhizomes of Academic Practice: Culturally and Linguistically Diverse Students Negotiating Learning and Belonging

Abstract

Culturally and linguistically diverse (CALD) students enrolled in a Masters programs at an Australian university are often invisible or less visible in class; however, what is visible is their academic practice, which is often viewed as a deficit. Instead of comprehending how CALD students can become productive members of a community, research regularly examines ways to upgrade their academic literacy practices. This study contends that these students have much to offer, and if these students are to be considered valuable members of the higher education context, the learning community needs to perceive their difference as positive. This implies going beyond the institutional assessment of their academic practice as deficit and examining spaces of learning as rhizomatic. Drawing on the theory of Deleuze and Guattari, this study highlights how the process of becoming for the students and the teacher teaching them is never static, but is one constituted of deterritorialization and subsequent reterritorialization, resulting in the rhizomatic principle of variegated subjectivity. Data collected over two years illustrated how, for the researcher/ teacher, molecular level difference was possible within the molar level academic expectations. Themes of being and becoming and rhizomatic reimaginations demonstrated the desire of the students to achieve as a positive attempt to celebrate their difference, and, for the researcher, her academic positionality as a fluid, ongoing process where the molar and the molecular interact to illustrate teaching as a productive venture.