Sustainability in Hospitality and Tourism Education: towards and Integrated Curriculum

• Bynum Boley ^[1]
  1. [1] Virginia Tech - Wake Forest University

     Virginia Tech - Wake Forest University

     Estados Unidos

     
• Localización: Journal of hospitality and tourism education, ISSN 1096-3758, Vol. 23, Nº. 4, 2011, págs. 22-31
• Idioma: inglés
• Texto completo no disponible (Saber más ...)
• Resumen

  • The growing importance of sustainability to the hospitality and tourism industry has resulted in an increased pedagogical discussion pertaining to how to incorporate sustainability into the undergraduate curriculum. The previous discussion has largely focused on the need to teach sustainability within the hospitality and tourism curriculum (Deale et al., 2009), and determining hospitalityand tourism stakeholders'attitudes towards teaching sustainability in the curriculum (Barber et al., 2011). Despite the strong interest in sustainability, Deale et al. (2009) article reveals that sustainability is rarely taught within the curriculum. This study moves the discussion away from should sustainability be taught within the hospitality and tourism curriculum towards a discussion of how to best teach sustainability within the curriculum. This article suggests that an integrated sustainability curriculum will provide students with a better education and better preparation for the hospitality and tourism profession than limiting its inclusion to specific classes or majors. Part of this recommendation for integration of sustainability into the hospitality and tourism curriculum is a proposed model that demonstrates the need to view sustainability as the ultimate context of focus and hospitality and tourism as a subcomponent of this focus. Having sustainability as the end goal of hospitality and tourism will result in natural integration of sustainability into the curriculum because sustainability is the main context of interest. The difficulties and challenges of integrating sustainability into the curriculum are also discussed, as well as, suggestions to help facilitate the process.