Routledge Handbook of Ecotourism

David A. Fennell, David A. Fennell

• Editore: Routledge
• Anno: 2021
• ISBN:
  9781000433678
• Edizione: 1
• Argomento: Business
• Categoria: Hospitality, Travel & Tourism Industry

This handbook presents a timely, broad-ranging, and provocative overview of the essential nature of ecotourism. The chapters will both advance the existing central themes of ecotourism and provide challenging and divergent observations that will thrust ecotourism into new areas of research, policy, and practice.

The volume is arranged around four key themes: sustainability, ethics and identity, change, conflict, and consumption, and environment and learning, with a total of 28 chapters. The first section focuses on sustainability as a core ecotourism criterion, with a primary focus on some of the macro sustainability issues that have an impact on ecotourism. Foremost among these topics is the linkage to the UN's Sustainable Development Goals, which have relevance to ecotourism as one of the greenest or most responsible forms of tourism. The chapters in the second section provide a range of different topics that pull ecotourism research into new directions, including a chapter on enriching indigenous ecotourism through culturally sensitive universalism. The third section includes chapters on topics ranging from persons with disabilities as a neglected body of research in ecotourism, to ecotourism as a form of luxury consumption. The final section emphasises the link between ecotourism and learning about the natural world, including a deeply theoretical chapter on rewilding Europe. With contributions from authors around the world, this handbook gives a global platform to local voices, in both developed and emerging country contexts.

The multidisciplinary and international Routledge Handbook of Ecotourism will be of great interest to researchers, students, and practitioners working in tourism and sustainability.

THEME 4
Environment and learning

22
Ecotourism and theories of learning/education

Manuel Ramón González-Herrera and Silvia Giralt-Escobar

DOI: 10.4324/9781003001768-22

Introduction

The teaching performance of an ecotourism professor is more professional when it is based on science (Ferreiro, 2006). That is why it is increasingly necessary to promote the strengthening and links between ecotourism, education and research (Robledano et al., 2018), especially in the globalised world in which we live, where communicative globalisation has transformed educational potentials (Marginson & Dang, 2017). In this sense, it is considered that alternative tourism linked to education and culture can contribute significantly to human development from a socio-economic, political, cultural, and spiritual point of view, in harmony with itself, with nature, and with other human beings (Torres, Zaldívar, & Enríquez, 2013). Based on this, new professionals will be able to transfer scientific-technological knowledge and socialisation of ecotourism principles to local communities (Cujía, Pérez, & Maestre, 2017), and to the tourists with whom they interact.

Evidently, in tourism practice, educational goodwill is not so coherently associated to the quality of the services offered. Recent research reveals that some companies pay little attention to the educational components of ecotours, and concludes that, while almost all tourist guides minimise their educational role or practice, most tourists prioritise education and new learning in their ecotourism experiences. That is why they expect guides to improve their educational role, recognising that this constitutes a contradiction between the expectations of tourists and the understanding of the guides of their role, with significant implications for management and practice of ecotourism (Duong et al., 2019). This study shows two important educational axes for ecotourism; the first relates to the work of tourist guides (and tourist experiences in general) in relation to their educational role and the second regards the teaching of this discipline.

Such a contradiction reflects one of the challenges facing ecotourism education, so a change from the traditional teacher-centred and classroom-based educational practices, to innovative student-centred approaches is necessary (Ramírez & Santana, 2019), with emphasis on strengthening the binomial formed by ecotourism and sustainability education (Piñar, García, & García, 2012). Given this opportunity, some destinations have opted to increase the number of international and national visitors through human resources education, and thus, have a trained and qualified workforce, especially in ecotourism (Thapa, 2019).

Ecotourism and education

Ecotourism is a growing international tourism trend, with demands on natural, cultural, and human resources (Bustam, Buta, & Stein, 2012). Hector Ceballos-Lascuráin is credited with coining the term ecotourism and its preliminary definition in July 1983, when he stated that ecotourism involves travelling to relatively undisturbed or uncontaminated natural areas with the specific object of “studying”, admiring, and enjoying the scenery and its wild plants and animals, as well as any existing cultural aspects (Planeta.com, 2007). Since the emergence of this concept in the late twentieth century, the influence of “knowledge and education” on nature tourists’ behavior has been explored in many studies (Moghimehfar, Halpenny, & Ziaee, 2014). Therein, it is recognised that “visitor learning” is the central aim in almost all definitions of ecotourism, which involves a “learning experience” (Walter, 2013; Mondino & Beery, 2019).

Ecotourism has several characteristics. It takes place in natural areas; it sustains local communities; includes wildlife encounters and recreational experiences; and may take on aspects of adventure tourism, community-based ecotourism, volunteer tourism, and outdoor education. According to TIES’s definition and principles of ecotourism, this is conceptualised as responsible travel to natural areas that conserves the environment and improves the wellbeing of local people (TIES Overview, 1990). This definition recognises the scope of “responsible travel”, which supposes the need for an educational perspective. In this chapter, ecotourism is understood as “Travel with a primary interest in the natural history of a destination. It is a non-invasive and participatory form of nature-based tourism that is built around learning, sustainability (conservation and local participation/benefits), and ethical planning, development and management” (Fennel, 2020, p. 20). This definition emphasises the importance of “learning/education” as a central theme of ecotourism.

Based on the previous definitions, it is important to mention that links between ecotourism and education are closely related to the world of tourism and travel, based on which the need for training of different stakeholders arises, either from a professional perspective or from that of general culture. Camargo and Sánchez (2016), argue that good tourism development starts with education. In this order, these authors coincide with the criteria of the Tourism Education Futures Initiative (TEFI), when they affirm that collaborative education and co-creation of knowledge are the basis for creating sustainable tourism (Camargo & Sánchez, 2016), one of the main principles of ecotourism education.

In response to this demand, ecotourism education is offered through different university models and tourism training technicians (Cervera & Ruiz, 2008; Boluk & Corey, 2016), as well as through tourism education and training promoted by UNWTO in response to the needs of employers and tourism professionals (Sancho Pérez, 1995; Fossati, Marín, Pedro, & Sancho, 2003). In the same way, the general formation of the tourist culture of the host community is particularly favored (Alonso, Gallego, & Honey, 1995, 2006), and the experiential learning during tourist trips is inspired (García-Allen, 2019). For this reason, tourism becomes a cognitive and affective-motivational phenomenon for different audiences, which is why this discipline needs to be studied by the pedagogy and education sciences.

Pedagogy is one of the social sciences that studies consciously organised and goal-oriented education (Urías, 2013), as well as unconscious and unintended experiences grouped in the informal education category (Elías, 2016). That is to say, that it studies the formation of the students in all its aspects, in function of which the educational institution as a main factor, the family, and the social organisations intervene. In the opinion of different authors, like Elías (2016), “Pedagogy has a dubious status as a scientific discipline, in conflict, voices inside and outside its domains debating its nature. In this way, it has incorporated theoretical constructs, methodological focuses and instrumental resources from sciences with a greater degree of consolidation – and recognition – (anthropology, sociology, psychology, among others); at the same time that it has developed its own theoretical and methodological body” (Elías, 2016, pp. 33–34). With these approaches, ecotourism education represents the integrated set of knowledge that allows the guidance of the educational process of educational institutions and their environments of influence, as well as of other training institutions.

Didactics is the branch of pedagogy that studies the teaching and learning processes, through which instruction, education, and student development are given (Álvarez de Zaya, 1999; Urías, 2013). This subdiscipline has a dynamic, complex, and multifactorial object of study, at the same time that it involves the active participation of the learner (Ibid.). Hernández, Hernández, Capote, and García (2004) consider that “Education is a very complex sociocultural phenomenon and, for its complete study and analysis, the participation and collaboration of multiple disciplines that explain its different dimensions and contexts are necessary. [So] … nobody doubts that without such concurrence of disciplinary perspectives, the analysis of education would be partial and incomplete” (Hernández et al., 2004, p. 40).

Learning and teaching are conceptual categories corresponding to different disciplinary fields, although connected; so, they assume different objects of study. On the one hand, learning is the process of acquiring knowledge, skills, abilities, attitudes, and values, which are generally obtained through observation, study, teaching, experience, or practice. Due to its complexity, there are various theoretical positions and conceptual meanings regarding its definition, methods, and applications. Depending on these, different learning paradigms and theories have been developed regarding the act of learning, which are mainly linked to the disciplinary field of psychology. On the other hand, teaching is the action and effect of teaching or instructing through the transmission of ideas, principles, beliefs, knowledge, experiences, skills, and habits to another person who does not have them. During this activity, teachers or facilitators interact with their students in a given educational context, through which learning or knowledge acquisition is facilitated. To achieve this goal, several paradigms, models, and approaches related to the act of teaching have been developed, mainly linked to the disciplinary field of pedagogy and education sciences.

When pedagogy assumes tourism in particular as an educational study object, a specific branch of this known as tourism pedagogy or leisure pedagogy is created (Colton, 1987; Galles, Graves, & Sexton,...

Indice dei contenuti

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• List of figures
• List of tables
• List of contributors
• Introduction
• Theme I: Sustainability
• Theme II: Ethics and identities
• Theme III: Change, conflict, and consumption
• Theme IV: Environment and learning
• Conclusion
• Index