A Transformational Journey for Tourism Pedagogy

Convinced that tourism education needs serious rethinking, the Tourism Education Futures Initiative (TEFI) has a mission to be the leading, forward-looking network that inspires, informs and supports tourism educators and students to passionately and courageously transform the world for the better. Since its inception in 2006, the network has expanded both in numbers of engaged participants and in areas of activity and study (see Dredge et al., 2015 for a detailed review of TEFI’s origin, mission, organization and administration). Its eighth conference, held at the University of Guelph in Canada in June 2014 (see the conference report, p. 294 for a summary) zeroed in on the theme of Transformational Learning: Activism, Empowerment, and Political Agency in Tourism Education.

What began at the TEFI 8 conference as a dialogue around issues of activism, empowerment and political agency, with these six articles has come back to the classroom to uproot learners and educators, and bring us on a transformational journey far beyond desks and textbooks. This special issue opens the reader to a worldview of life-wide learning. Mezirow’s (1978) seminal work on transformative learning theory (TLT) underpins much of the discussion in these articles, starting with Stone and Duffy’s systematic review of travel and tourism research utilizing TLT. The discovery that research utilizing TLT in travel and tourism is very much in its infancy is not surprising, and it is hoped that this special issue will contribute to a heightened interest in the topic and lead more educators to adopt strategies that encourage learning at Mezirow’s (1997) higher levels, namely transforming habits of mind and transforming points of view. Stone and Duffy found that most travel and tourism research focuses on educational travel as a modality for achieving these higher levels of transformative learning as opposed to travel and tourism education in a traditional, classroom-based setting, and they clearly identify the gap in research related to campus-based pedagogy.

In their article, Liang, Caton and Hill study precisely this relationship between travel and learning, providing further insight to facilitate transformational learning. Considering that tourism education is all about understanding travel and its impacts on the world, it should be particularly important that students should benefit from the educational travel programs that also facilitate transformational learning and empowerment. But Liang et al. dig deeper to understand what it is about travel that promotes learning and what the specific conditions are that facilitate the transformation of how students see themselves and the world. Their conclusion that the four conditions of motivation: departure from comfort zone; reflection; sharing; and travel biography, are pivotal to achieving this has clear implications for tourism educators.

Born out of their frustrations concerning the lack of student social consciousness, the absence of student–professor activism, and the need to empower students as future social transformation agents, Boluk and Carnicelli discuss a number of projects that “allow their students to encounter the difficult and cruel reality of social oppression and injustice” (p. 244) through volunteering and engagement in their own communities. These projects very much push students beyond their comfort zone and together with critical reflectivity have allowed them to engage in the social transformation process. Influenced by their own experiences as students, Boluk and Carnicelli strongly advocate for universities to (re)embrace the social importance of education and encourage student engagement and contribution to local communities.

In a similar vein, Boyle, Wilson and Dimmock reflect on the role played by the educator’s worldview, especially as it pertains to sustainability. They explore the ideological perspectives of academics that teach sustainability to tourism and hospitality students in Australia. If largely focusing on the economic tenet of sustainability, lecturers themselves tended to adopt a weaker ideological position while those who take a strong sociocultural/environmental focus are more likely to hold an ecocentric or ecological worldview rather than exhibiting anthropocentric or technocentric attitudes. Boyle et al. also found that those who held a strong sustainability perspective were more likely to engage with transformative tenets of political agency, critical reflection, and activism and expressed a desire to question the mainstream business model.

Yet another approach to incorporating meaningful, authentic learning experiences directly in their course curriculum is proposed by Smith, Butcher, Litvin and Frash. Their investigation in instructional scaffolding or the implementation of a progression of methods that move from passive to situated to real-world learning experiences, demonstrated a significant improvement in learning outcomes. It also contributes a better understanding of the theoretical foundations of the subject matter while at the same time achieving praxis.

Finally, Reinl and Kelliher take us beyond the institution to lead facilitated learning networks for tourism micro-firms. After all, learning is empowerment, it can stimulate activism and build political agency, and in tourism pedagogy, it calls for a journey beyond our institutions. By following a cohort of Irish micro firm tourism practitioners over a period of several years to “explore the educational path to sustainable learning community engagement” (p. X), the authors were able to trace the journey of these entrepreneurs from individual to collaborative learning.

This issue takes the reader into the classroom, the community, to foreign destinations and the world of the small businesses that dominate the tourism industry. Whatever the setting, critical reflection is the key to transforming habits of mind and transforming points of view.

DISCLOSURE STATEMENT

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.