Curriculum In Tourism Education

Curriculum is a fundamental part of an institution; it is composed of the knowledge and skills that the students need to acquire in the university. These are set of courses that institutions include in their syllabus. The educators prescribe courses in the curriculum which will meet the standard of the industry (Great School Partnership, 2015). Curriculum is a framework of the subjects that will be taught and tackled throughout an academic year (Cooper 2002; Ratcliff 1997). Instructors craft the content of their syllabus based on the emerging trends in the industry. A study of Oktadiana & Chon (2015) acknowledged four philosophical approaches in the development of curriculum: perennialism, essentialism, progressivism, and reconstructionism.

This is further supported by the study “Rethinking Tourism Education: What Should Schools Teach?” written by Inui, Wheeler, and Lankford (2006) which focused on two approaches related to educating future tourism professionals which they think have already been overlooked and already become a critical issue in the tourism education: the perspective of employability which is the primary goal and the perspective of providing insightful ideologies that would help in the improvement of the current common practices for the development of tourism as a whole. The researchers of this study consulted educators and industry professionals to develop a set of curriculum modules to teach to the students. The design of the curriculum should be aligned with the needs of the tourism industry which is to satisfy customers and to produce economic benefits all the while producing young talented individuals that performs beyond the conventional scope of the industry’s needs for the improvement of the industry as a

Interrelating education and labor, educators should be updated on the trends that the market requires in order to develop an improved curriculum that the students would need to get a job in the industry (Stanciulescu & Bulin, 2012) most especially there is a fast and complex change in the tertiary education in the tourism and hospitality management education and it has redefined the views and nature of the tourism education and the quality of the delivery of the higher education (Dearn, 2006; Marginson, 2006; Marginson & Considine, 2000; Marginson & Rhoades, 2002). Gaps may exist between the fast-paced nature, quality, and delivery of tourism tertiary education and may negatively affect and produce serious consequences to the four key tourism stakeholders namely: current students (internal customers), the university (service provider), and graduates and employers (external customers). The intersection between the academe and the industry is a powerful core of influence for tourism education (Sheldon, Fesenmaier& Tribe, 2011). Industry partnerships are then recognized as an effectual means of reducing existing gaps between what the university can produce and what the tourism industry wants and needs for potential employees (Roberts,