Pedagogy and Professional Development

Sowing the Seeds of Change: Educating emerging Textile & Apparel professionals on sustainability from cotton industry perspective

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Abstract

The study aimed to promote sustainability-based education in fashion design and merchandising program to enhance students’ knowledge, skills and attitude about sustainability development, organizational responsibility and personal responsibility from the cotton industry perspective. To conduct this study three learning components were considered; learning from experts, learning by doing and outreach activity. Sustainability related topics were strategically incorporated in different courses for one year; project-based learning approach was adopted, and pre-post-test survey was conducted to study the impact of sustainability-based education on student learning outcome. Rand’s PAM matrix was applied to analyze the impact of sustainable education on student learning outcomes. The results of course projects indicated enhanced student's abilities on using different types of cotton materials in product development, creative use of cotton in visual merchandising and development of business plans focused on sustainability. The two-group mean comparisons showed a significant positive impact on students’ knowledge in cotton and sustainability, followed by students’ skills and attitudes.

Keywords: Fashion education, Project based learning, Sustainable development, Organizatinal responsibility

How to Cite:

Jaiswal, G., Hopfer, E. N. & Dixon, D. L., (2022) “Sowing the Seeds of Change: Educating emerging Textile & Apparel professionals on sustainability from cotton industry perspective”, International Textile and Apparel Association Annual Conference Proceedings 79(1). doi: https://doi.org/10.31274/itaa.15892