Learning to teach Tourism and Hospitality Studies in South African Technical and Vocational Education and Training

Abstract

Technical and Vocational Education and Training (TVET) colleges is an element of South Africa’s post school education system. The other elements are public universities, public adult learning centres, private post school institutions, and the SETAs (Sector Education and Training Authorities) (South Africa, 2013: xi-xvi, 8). Tourism and a variety of hospitality-related programmes are offered on the two major types of programmes offered by TVET colleges. Although the State recently introduced a professional qualification structure for TVET college lecturers the majority who are appointed to teach do not have a required professional teaching qualification (McBride, Papier and Needham, 2009: 8-9) and rely on their industry knowledge and communication skills to learn skills required to survive employment in vocational education. The paper reports of the learning experiences of new tourism and hospitality lecturers. The paper is gleaned from a broader study that analysed the learning experiences of TVET college lecturers who entered the profession without a professional teaching qualification. The paper highlights similarities and differences experienced by new lecturers in the tourism and hospitality sectors. The paper draws on in-depth interviews with eight lecturers employed at TVET colleges in the greater Cape Town area, four tourism lecturers and four lecturers in various elements of the hospitality industry. The framework underlying the paper is located within the critical paradigm and uses multi-level critical discourse analysis to analyse each lecturer’s journey to competency. The diverse, but relatively egalitarian, tourism sector resulted in new lecturers being incorporated into institutional communities of practice. The stratified nature of the hospitality industry, in contrast, resulted in different experiences depending on the part of the hospitality industry from where the lecturers came and the qualifications they had.