Braucht der Tourismus von morgen „bessere“ Curricula oder „bessere“ Lehre?: Plädoyer für eine problem- statt wissensorientierte Hochschuldidaktik als Grundlage jeder zukunftsfähigen Tourismusausbildung

The dynamic and expanding world of tourism is becoming increasingly complex. This tendency is leading to growing challenges for the educational programs of the future. To meet these challenges, the most prevalent approach is to focus primarily on identifying the “right” content of a program’s coursework rather than on the most suitable didactics. Presumably highly efficient “ex-cathedra teaching” of expert knowledge is the result. At the same time, lecturers are confronted with growing deficits in the knowledge levels of recent student generations, whose awareness of the world has been substantially formed by communication via social media rather than the reading of books. Moreover, neurobiological findings disprove the effectiveness of non-interactive forms of lectures and instead demonstrate that interactive forms of problem-orientated learning better meet the needs of learning as a self-referential process. In response to the prevalent practice of “ex-cathedra teaching”, there is a tendency among students to memorize academic material (which they then retain only for the short-term), rather than learning to understand the material in terms of the complex interactions that it entails. This paper strongly advocates paying more attention to problem- and solution-orientated methods of instruction, rather than focusing on what the “right” factual contents are. An important outcome of such a reorientation would be sustainable study programs that encourage critical, creative and innovative thinking based on constructivist didactics.