Tourism Education
ATLAS Special Interest Group
Tourism Education
The coordinators for this Special Interest Group are:
Goretti Silva – Polytechnic Institute of Viana do Castelo, Portugal
Sheena Carlisle – Cardiff 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
Annual review of activities 2024
The ATLAS special track on tourism education at the Austria Bad Gleichenberg 2023 in the October conference was a great success with approx. 4 presentations and a Tourism Ed SIG meeting to promote the Good practice template and AQUALT. The focus of presentations continued from previous themes that centred on education which support a greater level of practical and theoretical knowledge for students to implement sustainability principles and innovation following graduation. Excellent examples of how to engage students with practical destination-based scenarios and challenges and holistic methods of teaching were explored. During the Austrian conference Sheena updated the developments related to the AQUALT certification at the ATLAS Board meeting and laid out plans for the next 6-8 months.
For the 2024 conference at Breda University of Applied Sciences (BUAS) the Tourism Education SIG will take a year off from running a Tourism Education special track. Goretti Silva plans to present in the Special Skills Track led by Chair Corne Dijkmans and Lobke Elbers and focus on the importance of developing Good Practice in Tourism Education in the classroom. Unfortunately, Sheena Carlisle is unable to attend BUAS 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. The Skills Track at Breda will focus on the Pantour Tourism Skills Project which has significant links to the Tourism Education SIG aim and objectives.
Goretti Silva, who is attending the BUAS conference in person will continue to encourage conference delegates to write good practice examples using the template that was developed last year in 2023. A further push to complete Good Teaching Practice Templates with support from other SIG groups will also be encouraged from June – Sept 2024 and will be discussed with Jane Turner. It has been challenging to encourage ATLAS members to complete the template when other tasks take priority and other methods to collate good practice are being considered. One idea is to encourage a Masters student to investigate and collate examples of good practice of teaching in the classroom as a research project which could be discussed at the next Tourism SIG meeting June 2024.
Sheena Carlisle, as AQUALT Certification lead, has held several meetings with the ATLAS team, Corne via Pantour and Goretti as joint Tourism Education SIG co-ordinator, regarding the development of the ATLAS AQUALT certification and the competencies developed during the NTG and Income project. It has been agreed that the certification should primarily be used to establish whether tourism university degree programmes are adopting skill sets and educational practice that can support the development of sustainable tourism. The NTG and Income competencies have been adapted and summarised to integrate Transversal skills with the original NTG Social skill sets to support the two other categories Green and Digital skills. Currently the latest version and the digital skills are under review with view to be completed by end of May 2024 to send to ATLAS Board members for further comment.
Finally, there is a proposal to suggest to the ATLAS team to include a new Award category at the BUAS conference for a Distinguished Teaching Practice to encourage people to complete the Good teaching practice template during the conference.