ABSTRACT
This chapter considers the collective learning of agricultural college lecturers together with small-scale farmers, agricultural extension advisors, and local economic development agency facilitators in a water learning network in the Amathole District of the rural Eastern Cape, South Africa. It shows how boundary crossing collective learning occurred in a multi-actor learning network which took actors out of their traditional silos. The network used in-field change laboratories and collaborative productive demonstration site development to seed ESD curriculum innovation in rainwater harvesting and conservation praxis as sustainable agricultural water activity. The chapter also points to the role of students as co-engaged actors in such multi-actor learning networks, and argues that such learning approaches offer students experiences that are both practical in the sense that they learn more about the sustainable agricultural water practices concerned, and theoretical in the sense that they are grounded in social justice principles, and in ethical acts of empathy and solidarity building, reflecting ethical principles in the Earth Charter.
