Research Directions: Mapping a Rhizome of 21st Century Language Arts: Travel Plans for Research and Practice

Language arts education has experienced enormous growth and change with the advent of multimodalities in new media, digital literacies, and technologies. In this paper, Hagood uses Deleuze and Guattari theoretical work of a rhizome, rhizoanalysis, and rhizomatic cartography to view the field and examine differently converging theories, expounding upon the commonalities and proposing research and educational possibilities that these connections afford. She uses rhizoanalysis to map a rhizome of 21st century language arts education and attempts to show openings for language arts education that account for traditional and multimodal literacies within an era of traditionally assessed educational accountability. She also presents a landscape of possible implications for research and instruction in language arts through a relational analysis of Deleuze and Guattari’s map and the tracing.