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working skills for tourism and its sectors. Third, the
entrepreneurial approach assists in developing
entrepreneurs, largely for the local or regional
tourism businesses. Of late, tourism researchers
and practitioners have been placing more emphasis
on educating the tourist. This is perhaps with the
view to influencing their frivolous behaviour and
enhancing enrichment of experience, through
interpretation of touristic products and information
dissemination on or off site. Such an
approach can probably be called behavioural, as it
calls for a more humane tourism. This objective
teaches the tourist the `art of travelling' and can be
conveniently incorporated into a nation's public
education system at any or all levels. Tourism
education and research are interdependent, and
mutual benefits are derived from expertise in both.
Thus, all of these approaches draw heavily from
each other.
Since tourism education is objective-oriented
and performance-driven, and since the content of
knowledge is interdisciplinary, a holistic approach
to the subject matter is rather difficult.
For this reason, McIntosh suggests nine approaches
to its study: �1) the institutional approach, which
assists in compiling quantitative and qualitative
databases; �2) the product approach, which studies
tourism products and services; �3) the historical
approach, which analyses the genetics of products
and services; �4) the managerial approach, which
has business orientations; �5) the economic approach,
which analyses the economic implications
of tourism; �6) the sociological approach, which
studies host±guest interactions; �7) the geographical
approach, which investigates the spatio-temporal
aspects of tourism; �8) the interdisciplinary approach,
which provides a coordinated or systematic
understanding; and �9) the ecological approach,
which investigates relationships in the biocultural
systems.
Methodologies of tourism education are continuously
evolving, and no single method can be
prescribed as the ideal one. So far, all institutions
devoted to tourism, both in the industry and in
academia, are seriously concerned about the
quality issues. This problem directly pertains to
manpower development which in turn is a
concern of pedagogical practices. Research is being
conducted towards identifying finer and more
effective methods of education/training personnel
who will be facing newer and complex problems in
the tourism industry in the future. Awareness of
these problems will be provided by the information-based
technology that has overtaken all other
channels of communication and is being increasingly
utilised in education as well. In moving from
traditional methods to more sophisticated ones,
tourism education methods must aim towards
serving the needs of students, employees, employers,
governments and communities. In order to
achieve quality in education, suitable methods have
to be crafted for an effective partnership
between industry and tourism education systems.
Future methods need to include, among other
things, a system of checks and measures, proper
communication skills, participation channels for
the instructor and, above all, self-evaluation
techniques emphasising professional ethics.
See also: education/industry relationship;
education effectiveness; education policy;
educational media
Further reading
education, multidisciplinary 179
Cooper, C., Shepherd, R. and Westlake, J. �1994)
Tourism and Hospitality Education, Guildford: University
of Surrey.
Echtner, C.M. �1995) `Tourism education in
developing nations: a three-pronged approach',
Tourism Recreation Research 20�2): 32±41.
Jafari, J. and Ritchie, J.R.B. �1981) `Towards a
framework of tourism education', Annals of
Tourism Research 8�1): 13±34.
McIntosh, R.W. and Goeldner, C.R. �1995) Tourism:Principles,
Practices and Philosophies, New York:
Wiley.
Tourism Recreation Research �1995) special issue on
tourism education and human resource development,
20�2).
TEJ VIR SINGH, INDIA
SHALINI SINGH, INDIA
education, multidisciplinary
Education programmes in many applied fields
depend on more than one academic discipline. In