Educated Tourism
Janne J. Liburd, Associate Professor
Centre for Tourism, Innovation and Culture
University of Southern Denmark
Niels Bohrsvej 9, DK-6700 Esbjerg
Email: liburd@hist.sdu.dk
John Tribe, Professor of Tourism
School of Management
University of Surrey
Guildford, GU2 7XH, UK
Email: j.tribe@surrey.ac.uk
Educated Tourism
Keywords: Tourism education, transformation, collaboration, Web 2.0
Introduction
This paper reflects on key challenges and opportunities in higher tourism education. It argues that
there is a fundamental need for philosophical reflection about the aims of higher education and to
create new methods to support life-wide and life-enhancing learning. In many ways universities are
institutions of the enlightenment dedicated to rational thinking and improving scientific, objective
knowledge of the world. The enlightenment as a historical epoch itself displaced a period where
knowledge was legitimized by dogma and authority. Of course reflection about the aims of higher
education is not a plea to return to pre-enlightenment “darkness”. Rather it builds a case that the
progress of science, and technical knowledge, has too frequently become an end in itself, and this
is equally applicable to tourism higher education. Associated with this, the pursuit of value freedom
has led to the overlooking and the devaluation of values. So a new enlightenment is one where the
value of values is fully accepted and seen to have a place alongside the value freedom of science.
This is not a paradox. Value freedom is the lifeblood of scientific advancement. But mindful that
human advancement cannot take place without full consideration of values and a deep
contemplation of what is a good life and a good world.
Method
The paper is primarily philosophical and conceptual.
Findings
Barnett (1990: 22) emphasises that “higher education implies more than the mere acquisition of
knowledge. It requires a sceptical and questioning attitude towards knowledge”. In 1997, Barnett
points to the need for extending critical thinking beyond the confines of disciplinary knowledge
towards the self and the world, which Tribe (2002) refers to as philosophic practitioners. In order to
reclaim the purpose of higher education in tourism, a new culture of critique, creativity and
collaboration is needed. Such culture of educated tourism must go beyond conventional knowledge
and blind reproduction where students learn to reproduce the world that exist (Minogue, 1973). A
new, meaningful experience of learning should focus on the development of the whole person and
persons with a view of what kind of a world is to be developed and an ability to create that world.
Higher education has overly engaged with and separated the intellectual from the whole person. It
has detached the mind from the body, the earth and the universe and severed these vital
connections. We need to reconnect these as a matter of urgency. So a new experience of learning
would aim to develop the physical, the spiritual, the practical and the creative/artistic/aesthetic as
well as the intellectual. And the experience should be one of engagement with ideas in and for the
world and one which is highly motivational for students.
This beckons new curricula, learning structures and methods that are reflexive and flexible in
response to knowledge and external change and where learning is no longer confined to the
classroom. Repositories of knowledge are opening up; libraries are no longer exclusively for
students and staff, teachers share their teaching materials, and students and business partners are
contributing in growing, collaborative practices (Liburd and Hjalager, 2010). New communities of
learning are everywhere. They can be physical communities comprised of a relatively stable group
of people who inhabit a communal space, develop mutually dependent relations, often to achieve a
common goal or aim. Associated learning networks can also be maintained and extended through
virtual communities that co-create and link different repositories of knowledge.
Whereas advancing critical thinking and learning through open sharing of knowledge is still novel in
tourism education, and notable resistance is observed at the personal (students and staff) and
institutional (management) levels (Haven and Botteril, 2003; Morris, 2008; Liburd and Hjalager,
2010) we report on an example of progress in this area from the INNOTOUR project. A Web 2.0
platform, INNOTOUR is described as “an experimental meeting place for academics, students and
enterprises with an interest in tourism and innovation, and who are seeking to enhance their
knowledge, products and skills” (www.INNOTOUR.com).
Conclusion
Transforming universities into engaged, collaborative institutions where academicians and students
pursue the unrelenting examination of knowledge and its uses reclaims the aim of universities as
centres for a higher order knowledge development and collaboration with and for society. Here
students and academics critically engage in pursuit of possibilities, originality and the creation of
desirable futures.
Key references
Barnett, R. (1990) The Idea of Higher Education. Buckingham: Open University Press.
Barnett, R. (1997) Higher Education: A Critical Business. Buckingham: Open University Press.
Minogue, K. R. (1973) The Concept Of A University. University of California Press.
Haven, C. and Botteril, D. (2003) Virtual learning environments in hospitality, leisure, tourism and
sport: A review. Journal of Hospitality, Leisure, Sport & Tourism Education 2(1) 76-93.
Liburd, J.J. and Hjalager, A-M. (2010) Changing Approaches to Education, Innovation and
Research – Student experiences. Tourism Journal of Hospitality and Tourism Management 17: 1220.
Morris, D. (2008) Economies of scale and scope in e-learning. Studies in Higher Education. 33 (3):
331-343.
Tribe, J. (2002) The Philosophic Practitioner. Annals of Tourism Research, 29 (2): 338-357.