Abstract:

Tourist guiding education is given at the associate, undergraduate, and graduate levels of formal education. There are no field barriers for student admission to non-thesis master’s programs in tourist guiding, which has become a controversial issue. One of the legal conditions for the performance of the tourist guiding profession is considered to be fulfilled in the case of graduation from the master’s degree program without a thesis in tourist guiding that necessitates questioning the curricula. The aim of the study is to make a critical analysis of non-thesis master’s degree curricula of tourist and tourism guidance in Türkiye. The study is qualitative, and the data were obtained using the document analysis method and analyzed using content analysis. The document analysis included the non-thesis master’s degree programs in tourist guiding of 10 universities, 8 of which were state universities and 2 of which were foundation universities. The courses offered in the programs were classified by content analysis, and the learning outcomes and courses of each program were matched in line with the classification. In the research, it was concluded that the courses given at the undergraduate level were combined in some non-thesis master's programs; the learning outcomes and the courses offered were not completely compatible; and in many programs, the learning outcomes and the courses offered did not overlap. In line with the research results, some suggestions were presented to practitioners and researchers.

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