In today’s ever-growing multicultural and complex environment, intercultural competence is of extreme importance to the hospitality and tourism field, which not only serves people from all over the world, but also employs a diverse group of people.
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This research was funded by the 2020 CILMAR Seed Grant. The YouTube link to the presentation can be found at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XAEa6wujsg8&ab_channel=CILMAR.
Intercultural learning is essential yet there have not been studies into how effective hospitality and tourism programs are at teaching it. The study aims to enhance intercultural learning in hospitality and tourism students through three phases: examining the current curriculum design, evaluating students’ intercultural competence level, and discovering desirable learning approaches. In the first phase, a case study is conducted in a hospitality and tourism undergraduate program of a large midwestern land-grant university in the United States to investigate if and how intercultural learning is embedded in the present curriculum design. The case program’s undergraduate course syllabi, particularly the course descriptions and learning objectives, are analyzed by the method of text-mining. The results demonstrate a lack of clear and direct statements on intercultural learning in the course syllabi, while relevant clusters center at “culture”, “diversity”, and “global” indicate the significance of intercultural learning in hospitality and tourism higher education. The second and third phases, which involve both surveys and interviews, are ongoing. The findings are expected to enrich the extant literature on intercultural learning in higher education and further the understanding of this concept in hospitality and tourism. The study will also contribute to preparing students with a solid foundation of intercultural competence to ensure the diversity and inclusion of the workplace in and connected with the hospitality and tourism field.
If you are interested in applying for the CILMAR Seed Grant, information can be found here: https://purdue.edu/ippu/cilmar/research/seed-grants.html. Applicants should be employed and/or pursuing a course of study at Purdue University’s West Lafayette campus.
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