The Fashion Retail Academy is promoted as having strong links with industry and delivering industry relevant courses. ‘The Fashion Retail Academy (Ofsted Outstanding) is a unique, industry led college. Founded by retail giants, we offer a range of exclusive Fashion courses with unparalleled industry involvement to ensure you gain the skills and contacts needed to successfully progress to employment.’ (Fashion Retail Academy, 2021).
Vocational courses are created with industry input.
Industry contacts interviewed for research for my project highlighted a lack of knowledge of fibres and fabrics in graduates.
‘Graduates often do not know how to speak to a mill so that you are respected and get what you want as a buyer.’ (Fabric mill agent 1). It can be said that they do not know what they do not know. This is reinforced by Salmon (2019) who suggests ‘…….students are not necessarily cognisant of the kinds of skills that will be required of them in future roles at work’.
Object based learning (OBL) can be incorporated into my teaching to support learning and develop skills. Salmon (2019) states ‘OBL is an emerging approach to pedagogy in higher education in which material culture is actively integrated into teaching/learning as a stimulus for inquiry and catalyst of knowledge production.’
As lecturers we can support and encourage students so that they are prepared to navigate the workplace, develop industry knowledge of fabrics and garments as well as creative problem-solving skills. The aim can further be to inspire students to develop their learning and knowledge further.
In their report, Salmon (2019) discusses that ‘students wrote about the value of OBL to the development of workplace skills applicable to any of these contexts including listening and speaking, cooperation and collaboration, ‘deep’ thinking and critical analysis.’ Collaboration and discussion that takes place in classroom activities can support learning and inspire students to move away from initial analysis of fabrics based on personal likes and dislikes.
Bibliography:
Salmon, F (2019) The Power of Things : Enhancing Employability in Higher Education through Object-Based Learning. Trove, 2019, Available at: https://nla.gov.au/nla.obj-1261411213. (Accessed 12 November 2021)
Fashion Retail Academy (2021) Why FRA. Available at: https://www.fashionretailacademy.ac.uk/about-fra/why-fra/ (Accessed: 3 December 2021)