Existing scholarship on agroecology and food systems education within U.S. colleges and universities has focused primarily on preparing students to be professionals working in agrifood systems. Developing students' skills and competencies, though vitally important, may not suffice for supporting transformative learning. Transformative learning shifts students' perceptions and awareness and informs future actions, constituting a potential avenue for leveraging education to support transformations toward more socially just and ecologically viable agrifood systems. It is unclear, however, what pedagogies and educational practices enable transformative learning. This paper explores the integration of multiple pedagogical innovations within an advanced agroecology course taught at the University of Vermont. Over a decade, the teaching team has made iterative adjustments to course content and pedagogies with the goal of catalyzing action toward transforming agrifood systems. In this paper, we evaluate our pedagogical approach, asking: (1) How well do course content and pedagogy align with our definition of transformative agroecology as transdisciplinary, participatory, action-oriented, and political? (2) How well does our approach enable transformative agroecological learning, and how is that identified? We present our course evaluation as a case study comprising qualitative analyses of course syllabi, student comments on University-administered course evaluations, and most significant change (MSC) reflections. MSC reflections proved to be a valuable method for identifying and assessing transformative learning. Through a curricular review, we found that substantial changes to course content and evaluative assignments between 2010 and 2020 align with a transformative approach to agroecology. This is validated in students' MSC reflections, which provide evidence of transformative learning. In sharing evaluative results, processes, and insights, we aim to contribute to a broader movement of scholar educators committed to iteratively and collaboratively developing transformative pedagogies within agroecology and sustainable food system education. We contend that reflexive practice among educators is necessary to leverage education for transforming agrifood systems.

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This paper addresses the role of an Undergraduate Agroecology Research Fellows Program (UARFP) toward a more critical and equity-oriented agroecology pedagogy. As a model rooted in action, Undergraduate Agroecology Research Fellows (UARF) become members of the Agroecology and Livelihoods Collaborative (ALC) Community of Practice (CoP), at the University of Vermont; a transdisciplinary research and education group that engages in community-based participatory action research (PAR). Through this model, UARFs support undergraduate student engagement in an advanced agroecology course, through which a PAR process centered on soil health takes place with regional farms. This triangulated learning format involves in-class and on-farm lab work, alongside the embedded UARF enrichment program, through which agroecological principles are examined via inter- and transdisciplinary educational lenses. Within this context, the objectives of the pedagogical research presented in this paper were: 1) To analyze the ALC-UARFP perceptions of transdisciplinary co-learning through PAR, and 2) extract key lessons learned for critical pedagogy, through this model in action. Our methodological results illustrate the strength of participatory inquiry to capture stakeholder perspectives, iteratively informing the program's direction, and providing key lessons learned. Parallel to this evaluative strength, the qualitative results suggest that authentic undergraduate engagement in PAR offers great potential for the development of increasingly transformative educational programs. Further, our UARFP model, grounded in reciprocal and transdisciplinary co-learning within an agroecological community of practice, pushes the praxis needle toward a more comprehensive and critical agroecology pedagogy.