Rhizomatic curriculum in biosciences training: lines of flight in graduate education

Abstract

This article stems from reflections developed in the course Curriculum Thinking and Science Teaching, offered in a graduate program in the biosciences, and aims to examine the extent to which this experience can be understood as a rhizomatic curricular process, based on the formative effects expressed in the meanings participants attributed to curriculum, teaching, and scientific training. The study adopts a qualitative, cartographically inspired approach based on the analysis of formative narratives written by eight participants at the end of the course. Rather than relying on fixed thematic categories, the analysis follows lines of force, connections, and shifts across the narratives, taking into account the subjective, affective, political, and epistemological dimensions of the formative process. The findings indicate that the course created a space for problematizing the relationships among science, education, and society, unsettling stabilized meanings associated with scientific neutrality, curriculum policies, and pedagogical practices. Its formative effects emerge mainly as micro-shifts in the ways participants understand education, teaching, and professional practice. The dynamics analyzed can be approached through the notion of a rhizomatic curriculum, characterized by connections, returns, and reconfigurations among experiences, forms of knowledge, and contexts. By situating this experience within graduate education in the biosciences, the study contributes to the debate on the place of curriculum reflection in fields traditionally shaped by technical-scientific rationality.