ABSTRACT
To a large extent the development of hospitality education has been driven by what Tribe (1997), writing about tourism, has referred to as an agenda of ‘ocational action’. Action, here is used in the sense of the counterpart of reflection. Hence a vocational action curriculum is focused on enabling students to do, or, in Tribe's words (1999, p.119), ‘It is getting on with things, involvement with the world of doing, and engaging with the world as lived’. The prevalence of training restaurants, production kitchens and industrial training placements as a part of the students' learning experience all provide tangible evidence of this focus. Given its history, origins and development, this vocational emphasis is not surprising. In its origins, the education developed from on-the-job training in hotels. The vocational orientation was further supported by a strong vocational ethos nationally which emphasized the important links between an educated workforce and a strong economy and it was given added impetus by student demand anxious about future employment prospects. At the same time, as a new field of study, the basis of knowledge about hospitality originally drew strongly from studies generated directly from the industry and the world of work rather than from the many disciplines or other fields of enquiry which help to explain hospitality.
