Learning the practice, learning from the practice: tourist practices and lifelong education

This article will examine the relationship between learning and tourist practices in two fields of survey: social tourism and self-observation. Daily learning resulting from tourist activities developed for integrating disadvantaged communities into a mainstream norm, learning the tourist practice itself, and learning stemming from the tourist practice that furthers knowledge or know-how not limited to appropriating the practice, are interdependent. The notions of guided participation and of guided exploration reveal the learning mechanisms at work. The latter also affords us a lifelong informal education potential.