Textile Knowledge for Merchandising Professionals: Significance for Pedagogy in Clothing and Textiles

Abstract

Designed to explore ways in which undergraduate textile education could be strengthened, this study assessed perceived security with and importance of textile knowledge of merchandising graduates with regard to their job performance in retailing. Data are reported for 21 individual textile topics including importance/security interactions by topic and for perceptions of expectations of textile knowledge on the part of supervisors and peers. While the results are seemingly reassuring, they suggest problems with both superficiality and time specificity. They also raise a number of broader issues for pedagogy in the field. These include (a) concern with appropriating responsibility for curricular content, (b) the problem of communicating product knowledge as the structure of the communication system changes, (c) the preparation of students for participation throughout the soft-goods channel, and (d) the value of teaching from a global perspective so that students/professionals can remain adaptive to ongoing change.