Teaching Tourism Walking Workshop- 
TeToWaWo 2025

May-November, 2025 
Tokyo, Sapporo, Beppu, Wakayama, Hiroshima

ABOUT
The Teaching Tourism Walking Workshop (TeToWaWo) is a series of one-day walking workshops that will be held in various parts of Japan in 2025. Each workshop is intended for ‘local’ participants and will repeat the same theme in different places. Their focus is on exploring multimodal activities and assessments used in Japanese learning environments. The workshops offer participants immersive and embodied experiences where sharing of good practices takes centre stage. 

TeToWaWo follows in the footsteps of TeToWaCo 2024 (held in Sapporo) which focussed on values-based tourism education, emphasising the importance of personal growth amongst learners in higher education. The conference last year introduced also the importance of incorporating ways for learners to develop their multiliteracies through innovative educational environments. These are topics that we now plan to expand upon – asking participants to share and reflect upon both successful and unsuccessful attempts at breaking away from a teacher focused classroom style, to more actively engaged learning events.
The video about TeToWaWo2025 will be available soon!
Please see the video from TeToWaCo2024 here to get a feel for what the conference was like, and what we aim for in our workshops this year.

These workshops have the word ‘Tourism’ at the front, and we realised last year that this is both a blessing and a curse. Whereas the organisers all come from the fields of tourism, hospitality and events education, the learning activities and assessments are equally applicable in any other field. The curse is that the word ‘tourism’ might turn away a colleague who teaches in a different faculty as they might imagine that the workshop has nothing to do with their practices. – Nothing is further from reality. – We all learn from one another, regardless of what field we represent (exemplified by colleagues representing literature, linguistics, archaeology, and indigenous studies amongst others last year). It is also a blessing as tourism is a common nominator that is easy to perceive as a metaphor for society – regardless of what we teach, we can use tourism as an applied field to make the concepts we want to impart to our students come alive.

This year we want to hear about both successful and unsuccessful attempts at ‘breaking away’ from a teacher-focused learning environment. These can be:
  • Successful multimodal* activities or assessments inside or outside of classrooms
  • Unsuccessful multimodal activities or assessments inside or outside of classrooms
  • Examples of activities or assessments fostering critical multiliteracies* amongst learners
  • Practical challenges with attempts at creating active learning environments.
  • Reflections on institutional resistance or hurdles to non-teacher-focused learning environments
  • Reflections on student resistance or hurdles to active learning environments
  • Successful and unsuccessful incorporation of local community or organisation ‘problems’ in learning environments.

*Are you wondering about what multimodality and multiliteracies refer to? If you are, then you can see an explanation in Johan’s submission to the previous conference which you can find here.
Each workshop will be capped to a maximum of 15 participants, so that everybody gets a chance to interact, listen and hear from others, and share their own experiences in an open and relaxed atmosphere.

Participants will incorporate:
  • Researchers, educators, practitioners and postgraduate students with an interest in how to enhance values-based education in non-traditional learning modes.
  • Teams of colleagues (each acting as local hosts) from:
    • Hosei university (Tokyo)
    • Wakayama University
    • Hiroshima University
    • Asia-Pacific Ritsumeikan University (Beppu)
  • A team from Hokkaido University handling programming, administration, leadership at the walks, audio-visual logistics, and publications.
Abstract submission one month ahead of each workshop – (acceptance, or request for alterations, will be sent within one week)

Tokyo – Workshop date 17 May – Submission date 20 April
Sapporo – Workshop date 28 June – Submission date 25 May
Beppu – Workshop date late September (TBA) – Submission date 24 August
Wakayama – Workshop date October (TBA) – Submission date 21 September
Hiroshima – Workshop date 30 November – Submission date 26 October

Extended abstract (up to 1000 words / 3 minutes) and/or full contributions (6000 words / 5 minutes) – 14 days after each workshop.

Registration and payment on separate Peatix website when your abstract has been accepted.

(You can attend all workshops without submitting abstracts, and the price is the same)

Email title: Tetowawo2025[location]_abstract
Email to: tetowaco@elms.hokudai.ac.jp

Will be confirmed at a later stage
Each route will be approximately 10-15km long, and take participants through a range of different terrains, including suburban streets, parks, river sides, and industrial estates. We aim to find routes that allow for excursions to local businesses and NPOs to hear about their perceptions of how communities can co-exist in mutually supportive ways with tourism and leisure.

Each workshop is planned to be a 6–8-hours immersive experience. Filled not only with walks, but also plenty of breaks, stops at local restaurants and cafes to recuperate and support local initiatives, discussions and laughter. Indeed, we hope to create happy experiences where participants feel they can relax in the company of likeminded people, whilst still sharing important professional information with one another.
Conference Proceedings
A set of proceedings will be produced based on the outcomes from the walking workshops. See here for the proceedings from 2024.

Edited book
An edited book on the topic is in the making by Channel-View Publications (UK). Participants will be invited to this publication if their contributions meet the guidelines.
Transportation
Each of our walking workshops are aimed at local audiences, so there should be very little need for longer distance transportation. That said, we naturally acknowledge that travel between prefectures and inside prefectures might be necessary if one is not located in the town where the walk will take place, and for this we recommend using trains or inter-city coaches. 

Locally we will also use public transport as much as we can. The walking workshops will each be located at places that are possible to reach from the hosting university within one hour. Thus, the workshops should in principles not be longer than a regular work day counted from departure from each local university campus to the beginning of the walk, inclusive of the walk, and transport back again.

TeToWaCo2024 was held in Sapporo, Hokkaido, from August 30th to September 1st, 2024. Click "Read More" to find information about the event.

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At TeToWaCo 2024, we have invited three outstanding keynote speakers from different fields.

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We selected two hiking routes from the Sapporo Round Walk and created a conference VLOG!

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The proceedings of TeToWaCo 2024 are now available online.

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  • 8 Chome Kita 17 Jōnishi, Kita Ward, Sapporo, Hokkaido, Japan