Consideration of sectorial needs in tourism education

Director of School of Tourism and Hotel Management, Cyprus International University (CIU), Assoc. Prof. Dr. Orhan Uludağ explained that one of the most important components of training qualified personnel in the field of tourism is to design the curriculum used in tourism education by considering sectorial needs.

Uludağ evoked that the curriculum studies are based on two trends as practical and theoretical: “In the last fifty years, various ideas and themes have been produced in curriculum studies in the field of tourism. However, the most important factor in curriculum studies is that it has content that meets the needs of the sector”.

It was pointed out that there are different curriculum contents and some main curriculum movements such as objective-approach curriculum, discipline-based curriculum, student-centered curriculum, teacher-professionalism curriculum, and industry-education cooperation curriculum are used.

The curriculum study carried out through an objective approach is based on the learning experiences of students and discipline-centered curriculum plays an important role in the development of mathematics and science.

Prof. Dr. Uludağ stated that the student-centered curriculum aims to meet the needs of students: “The roles of teachers in the teacher-professionalism model expanded to include curriculum designers, assessors of grade progression, classroom and school problems researchers. The teachers created the decision mechanism on what to teach, how to teach and why to teach”.

CIU School of Tourism and Hotel Management adopted the industry-education cooperation curriculum as “the industry facts must be immediately integrated into the education curriculum,” said Uludağ.

It was added that the industry collaboration curriculum can be defined as the collaboration between industry/sector and education providers’. This model aims to balance educational goals with workforce needs.