Page 98 - World Heritage and Tourism Innovation

Sibiya Thandeka Education and Heritage

about how tourism impact communities in the com- that internet-based surveys provide the researcher with
munities where they live and go to school (Brundt- economic relief based on the logistical factors posed
land & Khalid, 1987). This aligns educational out- by the distance and financial costs, according to Van
comes with broader goals of sustainable community Selm and Jankowski (2006). The ease is also provided
development. by the accessibility by which potential respondents can
be reached. In this study, using email was particular-
Methodology ly attractive because the participant teachers work in
We present a constructivist qualitative study. Adopt- different schools across a large South African region,
ing a constructivist approach, according to Crotty meanwhile the researcher is based in outside South Af-
(1998), allows the researcher to search for culturally rica. However, despite the benefits, challenges were still
and historically explained interpretations of the social encountered. For example, communication with some
life world. The construction of meaning and knowl- teachers stretched much longer because of the poor
edge, according to constructivism, is a societal-driven internet networks, leading to receiving responses later
process through interaction with reality (Schmuck, than anticipated. Other teachers were concerned about
1997). This paper aims to pool multiple teachers’ their privacy and anonymity because, as Van Selm and
knowledge about the topic at hand to contribute to Jankowski (2006) argue, email-based responses are
the Tourism curriculum in the South African context. prone to invasion of privacy, where the identity of re-
The sample consisted of a total of ten (10) teachers, spondents can be compromised due to the nature of
nine (9) who are experienced, and one (1) who is a the Reply Function of an email programme.
novice, in schools located both in rural and township The study also references two case studies. Case
South Africa. Due to the logistical dynamics, an inter- studies in education can bring to the fore challenges
net survey was chosen as the most practical way of ad- faced by teachers in education (Broudy, 1990). In the
ministering the research questionnaire to teachers. It context of this article, teachers are unable to some ex-
was designed in Microsoft Word format and emailed tent to implement the Tourism curriculum to effect
to the respondents. community transformation, through the two case
The purposeful sampling of the respondents was studies below, we can draw some conclusions that it
based on the idea that I am a teacher and have worked is a possible feat.
with some of the respondents as colleagues in different
schools. In the process, they could suggest names oth- Results
er teachers I did not know, who could also be potential In rural and township schools, the tourism curricu-
respondents. However, the results of this study cannot lum can serve as a vehicle for teaching students about
be generalised because of the size of the sample. local heritage, environmental stewardship, and sus-
The choice behind the use of email as a tool and tainable business practices. By embedding sustaina-
platform for conducting online research data collec- bility principles within the tourism curriculum, edu-
tion is supported by the idea that as early as year 2002, cators can prepare students to become custodians of
emails were already used in Iceland in a study involv- their heritage and proactive participants in local eco-
ing teachers and students (Lefever et al., 2007). Elec- nomic development, however teachers also should be
tronic data collection methods vary widely, including prepared. This means that curriculum transformation
computer-administered, electronic mail, and web sur- and teacher training is crucial to the achievement of
veys (Nayak & Narayan, 2019). Since the early 2000s, the roles that the subject is expected to fulfill.
the Internet has become the most convenient tool and
platform for survey research, argues Van Selm and Discussion
Jankowski (2006). Online surveys present themselves Lack of a Strong Will
as both advantages and liabilities; for this paper, the Some teachers agree that tourism remains a vocation-
positives surpass the challenges. It should be mentioned al subject that is not taken as seriously as it should be,

94 | Proceedings of the 7th UNESCO UNITWIN Conference