A need for pedagogical renewal: a focus on graduate preparedness for employability

Abstract

Higher education is increasingly under pressure to prepare hospitality graduates for future employment to cater to the continuously growing tourism and hospitality sectors. This growth prompts the need to renew the existing teaching and learning methods in hospitality management courses to equip hospitality graduates with the skills and knowledge required for employment which they currently lack. Using the change laboratory (CL) method, an expansive study cycle engaged hospitality lecturers in the activity of finding collective interventions to improve existing teaching and learning techniques, with the aim of improving graduates’ skills and knowledge for employment purposes. This article reports on the findings of the CL expansive cycle held with hospitality management lecturers for the collection of mirror data, which was used with the aim of coming up with a solution to the changes needed in terms of hospitality graduates’ preparedness for employability. The findings reveal contradictions between the opinions of hospitality lecturers and hospitality graduates on the graduates’ preparedness for their work. The study also outlined the lack of graduates’ preparedness for employment due to teaching and learning challenges encountered during their study period. The study reveals a need for pedagogical renewal at the tertiary level and a need for the hospitality management lecturers to have a relationship with the hospitality industry in order to be in sync with the ever-changing skills and knowledge needs in the hospitality sector.