The Ideological and Political Practice of Tourism Management Courses in Application-Oriented Undergraduate Colleges under the Background of New Liberal Arts—Taking Tourism Hospitality Courses as an Example ()
1. Introduction
“New liberal arts” and “curriculum ideology and politics” are two critical strategic measures in China’s higher education field. In April 2019, China’s Ministry of Education and 13 other departments jointly launched the “Six Excellent and One First-Class” 2.0 plan to comprehensively promote the construction of new industries, medicine, agriculture, and liberal arts (Ministry of Education of the People’s Republic of China, 2019) . Among them, the “new liberal arts” is to integrate new technologies into the traditional liberal arts to carry out discipline reorganization and cultivate interdisciplinary comprehensive talents (Zhang et al., 2019) . The proposal of the new liberal arts shows that higher education attaches great importance to the humanities and social sciences and also points out the direction for the high-quality development of higher education in the new era. Compared with the traditional liberal arts, the new liberal arts require breaking through the traditional mode, emphasizing breaking the barriers of the traditional liberal arts and science majors, advocating interdisciplinary integration to cultivate students’ ability to accept knowledge in various fields, and emphasizing the cultivation of interdisciplinary thinking and innovative consciousness (Zhao et al., 2022) . Curriculum ideology and politics is an educational practice based on professional and general courses through ideological and political education practice activities or integration of ideological and political education (Zhao, 2019) . Under the background of “New liberal arts”, “cultivating morality and cultivating people” is an important task of college education (Lei, 2019) . Integrating “ideological and political” elements into professional knowledge can effectively realize this goal of moral education (Lei, 2019) . The construction of the new liberal arts puts forward new requirements for interdisciplinary, cross-border integration, multiple collaboration, and technological innovation in colleges and universities’ curriculum ideology and politics. The main feature of “new liberal arts” is the integration of disciplines (Zhang et al., 2019) . It promotes the transformation of the curriculum ideology and politics of colleges and universities from a single “curriculum ideology and politics” to a multi-dimensional “curriculum ideology and politics” (Zhu, 2023) . Due to the significant impact of liberal arts education in the context of new liberal arts construction, it is necessary to conduct an in-depth analysis of the practical direction of curriculum ideological and political construction to cope with the emergence of new trends, new thinking, and new characteristics.
Tourism is one of the pillar industries of China’s national economy. With the increasing trend of economic globalization, tourism has become an essential global consumption sector, has entered the public leisure lifestyle, and gradually become an indispensable part of People’s Daily life. With the diversified development of the cultural tourism industry, the demand for high-quality tourism services and management talents with integrity and talent is increasing (Li, 2023) . Tourism management professional education focuses more on guiding students’ values and emphasizes cultural confidence, disciplinary integration, and innovation to promote future development. Based on the practical needs of the tourism industry, constructing a curriculum system with humanistic literacy as the core, general knowledge and professional skills as the main line, and combining theory and practice is one of the effective ways to achieve this goal. The humanistic spirit and historical value contained in the discipline of tourism management show its unique ideological and political advantages and provide students with a unique learning experience. Although the curriculum ideological and political construction of tourism management majors in colleges and universities has made some progress, it still faces many challenges, such as a lack of understanding of curriculum ideological and political teaching, unclear subject of implementation and division of labor, traditional teaching methods, and insufficient teaching resources. Therefore, under the background of the new liberal arts, it is necessary to survey students’ satisfaction with the curriculum ideology and politics in the process of tourism management central curriculum ideology and politics construction to understand the students’ evaluation of the curriculum ideology and politics reform, to provide a positive reference for exploring the high-quality development path of curriculum ideology and politics construction.
The Ideological and Political Work Conference of Chinese Universities in December 2016 emphasized that all courses must be promoted simultaneously with ideological and political theory courses to form a synergistic effect (Feng et al., 2023) . As a primary subject for applied undergraduate majors in tourism management, Tourism Hospitality Industry is one of the four core compulsory courses for college students of this major to learn and master professional knowledge. It lays a solid foundation of basic knowledge systems and basic theoretical literacy for the subsequent major main courses, elective courses, and work related to this significant (Li, 2021) . Ideological and political elements in the course should be fully explored. Promote the development of professional education in a coordinated manner to analyze the effect of ideological and political implementation of the course and provide an empirical reference for the reform of ideological and political teaching of the course.
2. Sample and Method
2.1. Questionnaire Design
The Questionnaire is divided into students’ personal information and study satisfaction. The first section contains students’ personal information, including gender, grade, and political affiliation. In the second part, based on the actual situation of ideological and political work of “Tourism Hospitality Industry” course and referring to the studies of Qin (2022) , Wang (2023) , Feng et al. (2023) and Bao (2022) , 20 items about five dimensions of learning satisfaction are designed, including teaching content, teaching methods, teaching resources, teachers’ ability and teaching effects, as shown in Table 1. The survey content for each dimension was measured on a five-point Likert scale, from “very dissatisfied” to “very satisfied,” and assigned a score from 1 to 5. In addition, the statistical indicators include the mean and standard deviation, in which the mean score of 1.00 - 1.79 is “very dissatisfied,” the score of 1.80 - 2.59 is “dissatisfied,”
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Table 1. Survey dimensions and indicators of satisfaction in ideological and political teaching of tourism hospitality courses.
the score of 2.60 - 2.99 is “biased toward dissatisfaction.” The score of 3.00 - 3.39 is “biased toward satisfaction.” A score between 3.40 and 4.19 is considered “satisfied,” and a score between 4.20 and 5.00 is considered “very satisfied” (Feng et al., 2023) .
2.2. Questionnaire Distribution and Reliability and Validity Analysis
From September 3-17, 2023, a questionnaire survey was conducted among the students majoring in Tourism Management at Foshan University, majoring in 2019-2022, using the Questionnaire Star (https://www.wjx.cn/). In the end, 152 questionnaires were issued, and 152 valid questionnaires were recovered, with an effective recovery rate of 100%.
In addition, SPSS21 software was used to analyze the reliability and validity of the research scale. If the reliability coefficient is more significant than 0.8, the scale’s reliability is very high. When the KMO value is more significant than 0.8, and the P-value of the Bartlett test is less than 0.05, the validity is very high. The results show that the reliability coefficients of the overall questionnaire and the five variables range from 0.861 to 0.978, all higher than 0.8, which indicates that the reliability of the total table and various dimension indicators is high. In addition, the KMO value of the overall questionnaire and the five variables in this study ranged from 0.727 to 0.946, all of which were more significant than 0.7, and the p-value of the Bartlett test was 0.000, less than 0.05, showing a level of significance. There was a correlation among the variables, and factor analysis was practical, indicating that the scale had good validity. See Table 2 for details.
3. Result Analysis
3.1. Investigate the Basic Situation
A total of 152 students participated in the survey, most of whom were female and most of whom were members of the Communist Youth League of China.
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Table 2. Reliability and validity analysis results of the questionnaire.
Among them, 69 were male, accounting for 40.0%, and 83 were female, accounting for 60.0%. There were 21 members of the Communist Party of China (including probationary Party members), accounting for 13.8%, 25 people (16.4%), and 106 league members (69.7%). There are 51 students from the 2022 class, accounting for 33.6%; 26 students from the 2021 class, accounting for 17.1%; 44 students from the 2020 class, accounting for 28.9%; and 31 students from the 2019 class, accounting for 20.4%, as shown in Table 3.
3.2. Students’ Satisfaction with Teaching Content
The average score of each index in the satisfaction survey of teaching content is more than 4.20 points, showing a very satisfied attitude. Among them, “the content of professional ideals and professional ethics included in the course” (4.54 ± 0.65) and “the content of socialist core values included in the course” (4.53 ± 0.64) scored higher. As an introductory course for tourism management majors, Tourism Reception Industry mainly enables students to master management concepts and methods related to tourism and have a preliminary understanding of traditional and emerging formats of the tourism industry. In the course’s ideological and political construction, professional ideals, ethics, and socialist core values are organically integrated.
3.3. Students’ Satisfaction with Teaching Methods
The average score of each index in the satisfaction survey on teaching methods is more than 4.20 points, showing a very satisfied attitude. In order to effectively improve the ideological and political construction of the “Tourism Reception Industry” course, we jointly develop mobile classes integrating “professional, ideological and political education and labor education” in well-known scenic spots in Foshan, China, homes houses and museums, and guide students to carry out research on specific topics and write research reports, shoot theme videos, write and push documents and other learning tasks around mobile classroom cases, to mobilize students’ independent learning ability. However, in the Tourism Reception Industry’s ideological and political theory course, the relevant
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Table 3. Basic information of the survey samples.
case analysis, homework, and assessment have not fully broken through the traditional mode, and students’ satisfaction is relatively low.
3.4. Students’ Satisfaction with Teaching Resources
The average score of each index in the satisfaction survey of teaching resources is more than 4.20 points, showing a very satisfied attitude. Among them, the score of “ideological and political content quality of textbooks” (4.45 ± 0.59) was higher than that of “extracurricular practice opportunities” (4.42 ± 0.65). The Tourism Reception Industry’s ideological and political teaching material is the 13th Five-Year Plan for Tourism Management majors of ordinary colleges and universities in China, with standardized content and high quality. The major of tourism management is highly cross-cutting and comprehensive, covering a wealth of content, from astronomy to geography, food culture, architecture, art, ethnicity, and religion (Chen, 2020) . Thus, besides the theoretical study of ideological and political content in textbooks, the course on the Tourism Hospitality Industry can also improve students’ ideological and political quality through extracurricular practice opportunities (e.g., mobile classes) and other teaching methods that combine theory and practice. However, the extracurricular practice opportunities of this course are not enough, and the combination of theory and practice needs to be improved.
3.5. Students’ Satisfaction with Teachers’ Ability
The average score of each index in the teacher satisfaction survey is more than 4.20 points, showing a very satisfied attitude. Among them, “teaching spirit” (4.71 ± 0.51) scored the highest, followed by “ideological and political literacy” (4.70 ± 0.55), “ideological and political teaching ideas” (4.68 ± 0.57), and “language expression and guidance ability” (4.66 ± 0.56) scored low. Teachers are the key to the ideological and political construction of the Tourism Reception Industry. It can be seen from the research results that teachers’ teaching spirit and ideological and political accomplishment are good, which can provide a fundamental guarantee for high-quality education. However, the ideological and political construction of the “Tourism Hospitality Industry” course is still in the initial exploration stage. Students’ satisfaction with ideological and political teaching ideas, language expression, and guidance ability is relatively low, which is related to the teacher’s familiarity with the subject knowledge and the lack of understanding of the rich connotation of knowledge.
3.6. Students’ Satisfaction with Teaching Effect
The average score of each index in the teaching effect satisfaction survey is more than 4.20 points, showing a very satisfied attitude. Among them, “curriculum theory and practical teaching” (4.58 ± 0.52) scored the highest, followed by “personal ideological and political literacy improvement” (4.57 ± 0.61) and “theoretical knowledge and ideological and political integration” (4.56 ± 0.59), “practical skills and ideological and political integration” (4.51 ± 0.59) scored the lowest. Under the background of the new liberal arts, the ideological and political construction of the course Tourism Reception Industry has been innovated in many aspects, such as teaching concept, teaching content, and teaching method. The organic integration of professional education, labor education, and ideological and political courses has been deepened in innovation. Students’ satisfaction with the teaching effect is high, but the connection between theory and practice is not deep enough.
4. Discussion
The survey found that the ideological and political satisfaction of the students of the “Tourism Reception Industry” course is generally high. Regarding teaching methods, students’ satisfaction is relatively low in case analysis, homework, and examination. In terms of teaching resources, more than extracurricular practice opportunities are required. Regarding teachers’ abilities, ideological and political teaching ideas, language expression, and guidance abilities must be further improved. Regarding the teaching effect, the combination degree of theoretical knowledge with ideology and politics practical skills with ideology and politics could be higher. The construction of new liberal arts is a primary national strategy China adopted to meet the new round of global scientific and technological revolution and industrial transformation. Compared with the traditional liberal arts, it has higher tourism management professional education requirements. It has clear and urgent needs for the ideological and political construction methods and specific approaches of tourism management professional courses.
4.1. Effectively Integrate the Ideological and Political Content of the Curriculum to Improve the Pertinence of Ideological and Political Elements
The construction of curriculum ideology and politics in the context of the new liberal arts is a process that requires the teachers of various courses in colleges and universities to dig out the related elements of ideological and political value in the knowledge of the course taught based on the original various types of courses, to form a synergistic effect between various courses and ideological and political theory courses. While there are apparent curriculum differences and knowledge differences in each discipline, exploring ideological and political elements in curriculum and political construction should be entirely based on the professional characteristics of professional courses, balance content supply, improve teaching accuracy, and avoid homogenization.
4.2. Adopt Online and Offline Integrated Teaching to Combine Theory with Practice Organically
Under the background of the construction of the new liberal arts, it is necessary to reform and innovate the existing teaching methods. Due to the limitation of time and space, it is not easy to present many teaching resources in classroom teaching. It is also impossible to realize some personalized and engaging related cases, and the forms of homework and assessment are relatively simple. Under the background of the Internet information age, the ideological and political teaching of tourism management courses should not only do an excellent job in offline classroom teaching activities but also extend to the network teaching platform, using websites and apps as auxiliary tools and new carriers for ideological and political teaching of courses. At the same time, we will actively expand the second class teaching activities of ideological and political education in tourism management courses, organically integrate the second class with theoretical teaching and tourism practice, form a teaching system that organically combines theory and practice, and realize the connection between teaching and teaching inside and outside the class.
4.3. Coordinate the Exploration of Teaching Resources and Enhance the Diversity of Ideological and Political Elements Output
The construction of the new liberal arts requires that the curriculum ideology and politics realize the diversity and unity of knowledge imparting, value shaping, and multiple training. The ultimate goal of curriculum thinking requires teachers to use diversified and exciting teaching methods to fully explore teaching resources and combine theoretical teaching with practical experience. Combined with the findings of this study, the ideological and political education of tourism management major courses should focus more on increasing extracurricular practice opportunities and promoting students’ learning and understanding of professional knowledge and related ideological and political content through extracurricular practice activities.
4.4. Strengthen Curriculum Ideological and Political Training and Comprehensively Improve Teachers’ Curriculum Ideological and Political Literacy
Under the environment of new liberal arts construction, the key to promoting the ideological and political construction of tourism management courses in colleges and universities lies in teachers, whose ideological and political quality, professional quality, and professional quality are directly related to the construction effect. In the process of efficiently implementing the ideological and political curriculum of a tourism management major under the background of new liberal arts, it is necessary to build a team of high-quality English teachers who are student-centered, have superb professional ability, and noble ethics. As far as the investigation of the “Tourism Reception Industry” course is concerned, the teachers’ ideological and political teaching ideas, language expression, and guidance ability are still insufficient, and it is urgent to strengthen the teachers’ ideological and political training in the course in order to improve the teaching ideas and level.
4.5. The School and the Community Cooperate to Build the Ideological and Political Education Platform of the Integrated Politics, Research, and Enterprise Curriculum
“Teaching” and “learning” are based on the specific social life background, and the teaching practice separated from social life is empty and tasteless, and the educational practice separated from social support is also impossible. In the context of new liberal arts construction, schools and communities should focus on “adhering to the two steps” as the primary measure and jointly build a tourism management curriculum ideological and political education platform that integrates government, research, and enterprise. The second is going out; that is, colleges and universities should organize teachers participating in course construction to go out of campus, go deep into the government, research institutions, enterprises, and other places to understand their work content and grasp the trend of social development, and constantly accumulate teaching materials. In particular, in the ideological and political construction of practical courses, students should be organized to go to the government, research institutions, enterprises, and other places for investigation, internship, and other activities. Students can understand society, push forward, and inspire talent through social practice. Enterprises participating in the ideological and political construction of tourism management courses can provide first-line cases for theoretical course teaching and build a platform for practical course teaching.
In general, the ideological and political construction of Tourism Reception Industry in the context of new liberal arts should further enrich the content of ideological and political teaching according to its curriculum characteristics, integrate ideological and political elements into curriculum teaching, coordinate and integrate curriculum ideological and political teaching resources and appropriately increase extracurricular practice, promote the diversification of teaching methods, and enhance teachers’ understanding and knowledge of ideological and political education. By combining theoretical knowledge and concrete practice, professional course content, and ideological and political teaching content, we can jointly promote the construction of curriculum ideological and political teaching.