Tourism Education
ATLAS Special Interest Group
Tourism Education
The coordinators for this Special Interest Group are:
Carla de Melo – Polytechnic of Porto, Portugal
Sandra Vasconcelos – Polytechnic of Porto, Portugal
Lisa Gorton – Leeds Beckett University, United Kingdom
To provide a platform to discuss and critique key challenges, issues, values, processes and practices in tourism education and training. To identify and share effective practice which supports tourism employability and longevity of careers for a sustainable tourism industry.
Objectives:
- Utilise online forums and discussion workshops to discuss key challenges, solutions, and good practice in tourism education
- Contribute to relevant conferences to generate an equal interest in innovative tourism learning approaches and teaching methods as well as (pedagogical) research
- Encourage use of international policy developments and tourism education networks to support innovative teaching practice, such as UN SDGs, TEFI, BEST EN, CTS, CAUTHE network
- Discuss, critique, and promote accessible and flexible processes in future course design
- Reinforce university, industry and government cooperation and collaboration, through joint research processes and cooperative learning processes and projects.
If you want to contact the SIG coordinator, please fill in the form HERE
If you want to join this SIG, please fill in the form HERE
ATLAS SIG Soundbite 11 – Tourism Education
In the ATLAS SIG Soundbites series the different ATLAS Special Interest Groups tell about their SIG.
There is no soundbite of this SIG yet.
Annual review of activities – 2025
In 2024, the ATLAS Tourism Education SIG welcomed Annamarie Sisson as a new SIG Coordinator. After the change in leadership, there has been a set of internal online meetings among the two SIG’s coordinators that have been focusing on discussing and identifying its goals, ambitions, lines of activity, and research, as well as forming its community of members and mapping the state-of-the-knowledge on tourism education. By drawing on their experience, expertise, and research interest, the coordinators and core supporters set a roadmap for 2025 and beyond. To begin this new SIG route, a Special Track was dedicated to this SIG within the ATLAS Annual Conference 2025 https://atlas-euro.org/2025-6-vila-seca-special-tracks/
Plans for the next year
For the next year, we aim to include a Special Track within ATLAS annual conference 2026 in Leeds, UK. As discussed in the first online meetings with the SIG coordinators, we would like 1) to organize at least two webinars in 2025 focusing on the experience of educators in the form of conversations or round tables; (2) to launch a mentorship program pairing early-career educators with experienced academics; (3) and develop a resource hub for teaching materials, including open-access case studies and toolkits. We would also like to hold an informal and open online meeting with the members of the SIG to exchange ideas on the future path of the SIG and collaborative initiatives.
Unfortunately, Annamarie Sisson was unable to attend the 2025 conference in person and will join the ATLAS Board and SIG group meeting online, which is planned to take place during the conference. Other Tourism Education members will try to join online where possible.
Goretti Silva, who was attending the 2025 conference in person, will continue to encourage conference delegates to attend the SIG group meeting that will take place during the conference.