DIGITAL LIBRARY
INTERDISCIPLINARITY IN TOURISM – POTENTIALITIES AND CHALLENGES
Instituto Politécnico de Viseu (PORTUGAL)
About this paper:
Appears in: ICERI2009 Proceedings
Publication year: 2009
Pages: 3978-3982
ISBN: 978-84-613-2953-3
ISSN: 2340-1095
Conference name: 2nd International Conference of Education, Research and Innovation
Dates: 16-18 November, 2009
Location: Madrid, Spain
Abstract:
The contemporary higher education context is seen as experiencing dynamic change, which requires a teaching and learning continuous adaptation effort. When confronted with new teaching and learning contexts, which require changing one’s perceptions and behaviors and engaging in different strategies, teachers and students may feel lost.
It was felt that one way of preparing students for the new learning challenges was by participating in interdisciplinary activities.
This work presents a project introduced in the tourism courses, involving two subjects: art history and English language classes. We tried to implement teaching strategies that are directed at developing the students’ skills. During this project the teacher became a facilitator by providing information and clues to help students broaden their knowledge of the local heritage and to improve their professional skills. We wanted our students to acquire and build useful knowledge through strategies that they could later reuse. By making knowledge acquisition a useful and memorable experience students will, not only remember what they have learnt but also, develop working techniques.

Keywords:
pedagogical innovation, interdisciplinarity, tourism.