Abstract:
This study developed a clothing merchandising curriculum for integration into the Home Economics Programme of Universities in South-East Nigeria. Specifically, the study sought to: determine specific objectives of clothing merchandising curriculum; determine content of clothing merchandising education, determine delivery system to be used in teaching clothing merchandising curriculum; determine the evaluation activities to be adopted for assessing the achievement of the objectives of clothing merchandising; develop a draft clothing merchandising curriculum based on the findings from specific purposes 1-4; validate the draft clothing merchandising education developed and revise the draft clothing merchandising education based on feedback from the evaluation. Four research questions and four hypotheses tested at 0.05 level of significance guided the study. The study adopted the Research and Development (R and D) design. The study was carried out in five phases as follows; Phase 1: Determination of the important clothing merchandising skills, knowledge and attitude needed by Home Economics students. Phase II: Determination of the components of clothing merchandising to be developed, Phase III: development of the draft clothing merchandising curriculum, Phase IV: Validation of the draft clothing merchandising curriculum, Phase V: Revision of the draft clothing merchandising curriculum. The study was conducted in the South-East zone of Nigeria. The population was made up of 18,857 respondents namely: 31 Home Economics Lecturers, 60 Final Year Home Economics students, 36 marketing lecturers, 30 Business education lecturers and 18,700 clothing merchandisers. The entire population was used except for a sample of 20 clothing merchandisers purposively drawn to participate in the Focus Group Discussion (FGD). Three instruments were developed and used to collect data for the study namely the Clothing Merchandising Curriculum Questionnaire CLMCQ and two Focus Group Discussion Guides (FGDG). The CLMCQ was face validated by three experts from the University of Nigeria, Nsukka. Cronbach alpha reliability coefficient index was used to determine the internal consistency of the instrument and it yielded an overall coefficient of α= .88. The draft clothing merchandising curriculum developed was validated by nine experts namely; two Home Economics Lecturers, two Business Education Lecturers, two Marketing Lecturers, two Curriculum experts and a clothing merchandiser. Mean and ANOVA were used to analyze the data collected. The findings included; 23 objectives of clothing merchandising education, 29 content of clothing merchandising education, 34 delivery system and 19 evaluation activities for assessing the achievement of the objectives of clothing merchandising education. There were significant differences in the mean rating responses of Home Economics lecturers, marketing lecturers and Business Education lecturers on four objectives of clothing merchandising. Post –Hoc was carried out on these items and it revealed that the source of difference was the Marketing lecturers. There was however no significant difference in the mean rating responses of Home Economics lecturers, Marketing lecturers and Business Education lecturers on 23 out of the 27 objectives, 31 content, 34 delivery system and 19 evaluation activities of clothing merchandising education. Based on the finding it was recommended among others that (1) curriculum planners should utilize the clothing merchandising curriculum developed by this study to review the current Home Economics programme and integrate it into the programme (2) government should provide loans to Home Economics graduates to enable them establish and run their own clothing merchandising business upon graduation, (3) Home Economics lecturers should organize workshop to up-date their knowledge and go for in-service training in clothing merchandising and related fields of study.
