A chapter from the HEA's publication Enhancing education for sustainable development in Business and Management Hospitality Leisure Marketing Tourism.
This chapter reports on the learning experiences of students participating in an interactive interdisciplinary module Food Energy and Sustainability in the Hospitality Industry offered on the current Diploma in Restaurant Management programme at Waterford Institute of Technology. The diploma is aimed at mature learners with previous experience in the field of hospitality. Since the announcement in 2002 of the Decade for Sustainable Development (DESD) there have been widespread calls for reform of educational systems to reflect more holistic learning approaches as well as a call for the promotion of core skills knowledge qualities and dispositions for sustainable operations. The chapter focuses in particular on learner engagement during a student-led group project and interactive symposium with the theme of sustainability in the hospitality industry. Particular emphasis is placed on the idea that learning through sustainable development and acquiring crucial core skills knowledge qualities and dispositions is very much linked to the complementary notion of life-wide learning and the concept of possible and ideal motivational self-systems.
