| Author: | Kwan, Ming Wai |
| Title: | Strengthening affective hospitality teaching in higher education for academic mothers |
| Advisors: | Schuckert, Markus (SHTM) Au, Norman (SHTM) |
| Degree: | DHTM |
| Year: | 2016 |
| Subject: | Hong Kong Polytechnic University -- Dissertations Tourism -- Study and teaching (Higher) Hotel management -- Study and teaching (Higher) |
| Department: | School of Hotel and Tourism Management |
| Pages: | x, 182 pages : color illustrations |
| Language: | English |
| Abstract: | Nowadays, competitive global environment had profound impacts on the fast-growing hospitality industry. Fostering versatile graduates to meet the demand of the hospitality industry is an important agenda of all hospitality educational institutions in higher education. Teachers have far-reaching influence on their students; they are role models of their students. Students learn to become ideal hospitality practitioners when they imitate their teacher's behavior and recognize their teacher's values and attitudes. Influential teaching depends largely on teachers' internal resources and qualities. Thus, higher education, especially hospitality teaching should not just emphasize on cognitive domain but also on affective domain. As affective hospitality teaching is influential in the teaching process, it does not only concern transferring skills and knowledge, but it also cares about students' personal qualities, emotional needs as well as students' affective competencies for developing their future career. Similarly, the hospitality industry professionals have identified the importance of affective competencies in our graduates too. They expect hospitality graduates who possess both cognitive and affective competencies to cope with the ever-changing environment and to develop a sustainable hospitality industry. These hospitality industry professionals found that hospitality teaching in higher educations should reach beyond the cognitive domain into the affective domain. The foremost person to master and strengthen those affective competencies before teaching students is the teacher himself or herself. However, in reality there are specific challenges for academic mothers to strengthen affective hospitality teaching in higher education and balancing motherhood simultaneously that were historically seen as contradicting roles. Academic mothers in hospitality may not fully realize the importance of affective domain in hospitality teaching and thus may not pay specific attention to nurture students' affective competencies. Thus, assisting academic mothers in strengthening affective hospitality teaching in higher education is of profound importance. Twelve in-depth interviews were conducted with academic mothers in hospitality in higher education to investigate their thoughts and feelings of strengthening affective hospitality teaching in higher education and that of balancing motherhood, which have not been explicitly identified in previous studies. The results of in-depth interviews reveal inspiring insights from academic mothers' perspectives regarding the affective qualities of hospitality teaching in higher education, which was derived from the values, attitudes, feeling, intrinsic and extrinsic motivations from teachers through applying the various affective teaching methods to achieve the perceived outcome of affective hospitality teaching in higher education. Based on the results, the 'Framework of Strengthening Affective Hospitality Teaching in Higher Education for Academic Mothers' was proposed which contributes to strengthening affective hospitality teaching for academic mothers and hopefully for entire academia. Previous literature usually focused on the conflict theories that assume work and family are in conflict. In this study, the results of in-depth interviews reveal that hospitality teaching in higher education and balancing motherhood could be analyzed in competing and complementing perspectives. In competing perspective, conflicting phenomena exist if academic mothers manage hospitality teaching and balancing motherhood simultaneously. In contrary, the roles of hospitality teaching in higher education and balancing motherhood could be viewed as complementing each other. The expansionist theory provides a better explanation in this study. Some respondents explained that affective teaching could be beneficial to family because of them being a role model for child development, enhancing marital quality, connecting to society, buffering stress from each role and polishing affective hospitality teaching in higher education and balancing motherhood. Based on the insights gained from academic mothers, ten strategies of making strategic changes to enable affective teaching and balancing motherhoods are suggested. These strategies are 1) enjoying being dual roles of mother and teacher, 2) satisficing to be good mother rather than perfect mother 3) adjusting to reasonable career expectation, 4) switching to institutions which offer family-friendly policy and culture, 5) managing work proprieties effectively, 6) managing quality time spent on children, 7) seeking understanding and support from family stakeholders, 8) reintegrating personal leisure and family time, 9) utilizing community resources and 10) holding positive feelings enhance affective hospitality teaching in higher education. Furthermore, the 'Mutual Beneficiary Framework of Academic Mothers, Families, Institutions and Society' was proposed to add a new perspective to the existing literature and to provide practical recommendations to academic mothers, their families, institutions and society. Finally, some implications of hospitality teaching in higher education were identified. For a more comprehensive understanding of affective hospitality teaching in higher education and balancing parenthood, research could be extended to academic fathers to identify the similarities and differences between the two groups. |
| Rights: | All rights reserved |
| Access: | restricted access |
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| File | Description | Size | Format | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| b29499367.pdf | For All Users (off-campus access for PolyU Staff & Students only) | 1.87 MB | Adobe PDF | View/Open |
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