Gayle Ruth Jennings

Quality Tourism Experiences: Reviews, Reflections, Research Agendas

“Quality tourism experiences,” including its singular form, is a well used phrase in tourism industry literature and traveller dialogues. Yet definitions of a quality tourism experience remain elusive. Tourism studies, recreation and marketing literature similarly resonate with numerous applications of the phrase as well as its contributing terms. A social constructivist approach was applied to a literature review, in order to reflect on the status of “quality tourism experiences,” its meanings, as well as research approaches used and research agendas proffered. From the review emerged multiple interpretations and constructions as well as an emphasis on complexity. Research approaches were predicated to post/positivistic approaches. Research agendas essayed to understand specific dimensions of quality tourism experiences along with more holistic frames.

Tertiary Travel and Tourism Education: Using Action Research Cycles to Provide Information on Pedagogical Applications Associated with Reflexivity, Team-Based Learning, and Communities of Practice

Part of pedagogical practice is continuous monitoring and evaluation of classroom teaching strategies to innovate curricula as well as motivate and engage students (and educators). Using repetitive cycles of action research associated with pedagogical innovation, this paper presents three successful pedagogical practices: reflexivity, team-based learning, and communities of practice that educators can use and adapt for their own courses, units, or subjects. These practices engage students and work toward addressing the various challenges both internally and externally, which tertiary travel and tourism educators constantly face and address.

Pursuing: a grounded theory of tourism entrepreneurs' understanding and praxis of sustainable tourism.

Tourism entrepreneurs are recognized as instigators of much tourism development and consequently have a role to play in contributing to sustainable tourism. In particular, entrepreneurial engagement with sustainability has the potential to alleviate negative impacts of tourism on a micro-scale, particularly socio-cultural consequences, environmental degradation and economic inequalities. This study used a grounded theory approach to determine sustainable tourism meanings and practices undertaken by tourism entrepreneurs operating on the Gold Coast of Queensland, Australia. The study is significant as the grounded theory of pursuing, which emerged, highlights connectivity between the entrepreneurial self, the actions of entrepreneurs, their use of ethics and their praxes of sustainable tourism. The significance of this study is threefold. First, it contributes to the body of qualitatively informed holistically focused tourism studies. Second, it contributes to the literature related to entrepreneurs, sustainable tourism and ethics. Third, the study highlights the lived experiences of tourism entrepreneurs pursuing the provision of sustainable tourism enterprises. In particular, the tourism entrepreneurs identified the factors that served to circumvent their pursuit of sustainable tourism.

Facilitating deep learning in an information systems course through application of curriculum design principles

This article reports on the incremental improvement of assessment, learning, and teaching activities in a large first-year undergraduate course. The changes, made over 3 years, resulted in the implementation of a student-centered (though individual) assessment strategy that included students in developing and applying the assessment criteria themselves. The outcome was a student-centered course design that required students to engage in deep approaches to learning. Using an action research framework, Meyers and Nultys (2008) five curriculum design principles for facilitating deep approaches to learning (the development of which was guided by Biggss [2003] 3P model) are used to illustrate how the course was incrementally improved to facilitate deep learning approaches. The article provides an illustration of how others may pursue similar curriculum design improvements adapted for their own contexts.

Partnering for real world learning, sustainability, tourism education

Purpose – The purpose of this article is to study how real world learning was used to engender and enhance sustainability principles and practices with 11 micro-, small- and medium-tourism business enterprises and 101 university tourism students enrolled across three university courses. Design/methodology/approach – Action research processes were used to focus curricula on “education about and for sustainability”. A participatory paradigm informed the action research processes. The key methodology was qualitative. Empirical materials were generated through lived experiences, reflexive team conversations, team journals, reflexive journals and student learning materials. Reflexive conversations and reflective dialogue framed interpretations. Findings – The action research process found that pedagogies, andragogies and ethnogogies that emphasize social processes of meaning making and sensemaking enhance and engender “education about sustainability” and “education for sustainability”, especially when coupled ...

The Development of ‘Leiports’ (Leisure and Sports) Studies and Programs in Tertiary Education in South Korea

“Leiports” is a South Korean concept, which encapsulates elements of the Western-based terms leisure, sports, travel, and tourism. The concept is a result of mediations by social institutions, including government, societal groupings, industry, and education in South Korea. Using documentary and archival research methods of print media, academic materials, and online education materials, understandings of leiports were generated from a South Korean perspective. Although there is a prevailing presence of “leiports management” programs in the South Korean tertiary education sector, there is very little awareness of the concept of “leiports” outside that society. This article serves to highlight the concept, its historical development, as well as several related suggestions for tertiary education providers at the international level.

Hotel room attendants’ delivery of quality service:

Illuminating the physical difficulties experienced by hotel room attendants in delivering service quality at five-star hotels on the Gold Coast region of South East Queensland, Australia, our research was founded on socialist-feminist and critical theory epistemologies. In-depth interviews were conducted with a sample of 46 hotel room attendants. We used a qualitative, social-constructivist, grounded theory methodology to render the empirical material into a basic social structural process of tasking. Tasking offers a conceptual framework of room attendants’ daily employment experiences as they transform hotel rooms to prescribed standards. Tasking illustrates the high physical demands placed on room attendants, tantamount to exploitation from their own perspectives. Tasking contributes to research on employment experiences in hospitality, particularly on hotel praxis, delivery of quality customer service and the operational demands placed on room attendants. This paper presents the results of the first in-depth examination of the daily functions and roles of hotel room attendants.

Online Learning: Reflections on the Effectiveness of an Undergraduate Sustainability Tourism Module

Action research was used to evaluate the effectiveness of an undergraduate, tourism online module focusing on sustainability. The module emphasized “education for sustainability” along with “education about sustainability”. In addition to the module, sustainability principles and practices were embedded in weekly learning engagements. Online module activities, including a learning journal, required students to use higher order thinking, which shifted their learning beyond education about sustainability to education for sustainability. The module had to be completed in order to achieve a passing grade. Several students engaged in surface learning since there was no specific grade attached to the module. Currency of links in the module required constant monitoring. Additionally, user-friendliness of the module would have been enhanced by more seamless transitions between online components and sections. The majority of students appreciated that the online module provided novelty to traditional course delivery means. Finally, the online module was determined by most students, as well as, the course convener and tutor to be an effective method to engage undergraduate tourism students in higher order thinking and student reflection regarding education about and for sustainability.