Curriculum for the elective subject of tourism (RSL1-01)

The elective shall contribute to help pupils, individually or as a group, strengthen the desire to learn and experience a sense of mastery through practical and varied work. Elective subjects are interdisciplinary subjects that contribute to comprehensive and contextual learning.

We live in a global society. More free time and modern means of transportation now make it possible and easier to travel to new foreign destinations. It is also important to uphold local destinations and contribute to the future existence of tourism on a national scale and expand the opportunities for leisure activities at home. Society therefore needs creative people who are conscious of society’s needs who will do their best to create meaningful holiday and leisure activities for themselves and others, and who understand how vacationing and leisure activities contribute to developing respect, understanding and tolerance for other people, their cultures and their ways of life.

The elective subject shall help ensure pupils gain knowledge about the central travel and tourism destinations in their local communities, in Norway and around the world. Pupils shall be able to utilise information available from the different tourism and travel operators working in their local community and on a national basis. The elective subject shall also provide insight into the distinct cultural characteristics and ways of life of one’s own culture and the cultures of other peoples. Furthermore, pupils shall be able to make presentations about various destinations and the costs related to travelling and different means of travel.

The elective subject deals with planning and presenting vacation and leisure programmes and destinations in Norway and abroad for a number of different target groups. The use of English and/or other foreign languages for gathering and/or presenting information is a central theme in this subject. Calculating cost associated with travel and tourism in and to various destinations in different currencies may also form a part of the subject. Learning in the subject shall be based on practical experience that includes the use of various learning arenas and cooperating with different travel and tourism operators in one’s local community as a part of learning where this is natural to do so.

The subject gathers its main elements from school subjects such as Social Science, Norwegian/Sami, English and other foreign languages, but it can also include elements from Mathematics, Natural Science, fine arts and Arts & Crafts or Duodji and the subject of Religion, Lifestyles and Ethics.