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A critique of tourism curriculum proposals in the literature enables different methodological approaches to curriculum design to be identified and evaluated. Three methodological paradigms for researching into the curriculum emerge. These are the scientific positivist, the interpretive, and the critical. The analysis of this article points to differences between research paradigms, the implications of using each of them for curriculum design, and the limitations of scientific-positivist approaches. It finds that methods that are exclusively scientific-positivist may have only limited application because of their lack of attention to meaning and values and underlines the importance of approaching curriculum design mindful of the full range of research paradigms.