Decolonising tourism curricula: voices from South Africa

Abstract

The decolonisation of curricula in higher education has been receiving increasing attention over the past decade. However, to date, there appears to have been limited consideration within the context of tourism curricula in formerly colonised countries. Given that academics are primarily responsible for the development, revision and delivery of curricula, the purpose of this qualitative study was to explore the perceptions of decolonising tourism curricula as held by tourism academics in higher education in South Africa. Semantic and inductive thematic analysis was undertaken on responses elicited from 19 participants who completed an online, open-ended survey. Seven key themes were generated from the data including complexity, independence, stakeholder engagement, dynamic transformation, contextualisation, sustainability and multilingualism. These preliminary insights lay the foundation for furthering the conversation among tourism programmes teams on curricula transformation that promotes diversity and inclusivity.