A reflective evaluation of young water professionals' transdisciplinary learning

Abstract

The urgent requirement for transdisciplinary water professionals who can navigate the cascading complexities of water resources in a thirsty, inequitable world is widely acknowledged. To deliver a sustainable water resources sector, current water professionals need to synthesize diverse disciplinary knowledge, develop systemic thinking capabilities, and communicate succinctly with a wide range of water practitioners, policy makers, and a wide range of other stakeholders. In a first-of-its-kind program, the Indian Young Water Professionals (IYWP) training program funded by the Australian Water Partnership and supported by the National Hydrology Program, the Ministry of Jal Shakti, India, aimed to develop these capabilities. Practicing young water professionals from across multiple state water resources departments benefited from this 11-month program delivered by the Australia India Water Centre over the course of 2022. This reflective inquiry presents the learning from this innovative professional development training program. Adapting educational evaluation conceptual frameworks on boundary-crossing integrations, the program participants, supervisors, and designers reflect on this transdisciplinary program's epistemic, social and organizational dimensions. We asked ourselves, was this training program successful in developing transdisciplinary water professionals, and what do we need to do to design future programs? Our reflections point to the strength of the inquiry-based learning design of the program and the Situation Understanding and Improvement Project (SUIP) with the application of the [I]NSPECT model as central in shifting entrenched disciplinary paradigmatic thinking. Underlying this success was the strong organizational network engagement and commitment from multiple sectors at multiple levels across Australia and India. A key challenge was the online delivery of this training across continents, along with an ongoing obstacle for the IYWP participants of balancing demanding professional workplace priorities with academic rigor and training expectations. The face-to-face Water Conclave held in Delhi in November 2022 was vital in bringing the cohort together, sharing learning, celebrating achievements, and reflecting on next iterations.