ABSTRACT
Educators in agriculture and food systems are seeking meaningful methods to actively engage students in acquiring the knowledge and skills needed for tomorrow’s unpredictable climatic, resource, and economic environments. It is essential to stimulate new professionals to recognize the complex challenges that stakeholders face and the multiple and often conflicting goals of key players in the food system. Graduate agroecologists need the tools and confidence to move into real-world situations with an assurance that they have the capacity to deal with people who are much more experienced in the details of farming as well as food processing and marketing, yet to offer their competence in systems studies to help analyze contemporary challenges. Graduates need knowledge and skills, without doubt. Yet to help them better understand the motivations of their clients, we add the dimensions of exploring values and worldviews that often guide decisions, as well as a capacity for long-term visioning and planning for a more desirable and sustainable future. In this chapter, we summarize the experiences of the past decade in designing experiential learning curricula, with special emphasis on the open-ended case as a valuable tool for introducing realism in the education of agroecologists.
