Guided by the five cross-cutting themes of the American Association of Family & Consumer Sciences (AAFCS) Body of Knowledge (BOK) two capstone courses (C[superscript 2]) in Apparel Studies were designed to help prepare students for careers, further study, or both.

Children are engaged by finding out about science in the real world (Harlen, 2010). Many children will be cyclists or will have seen or heard about the success of British cyclists in the Olympics and the Tour de France. This makes cycling a good hook to draw children into learning science. It is also a good cross-curricular topic, with strong…

Textile products are used heavily every day. The apparel industry is one of the largest industrial polluters, causing damage to both human health and the environment. Despite increasing consumer concern about environmental issues and a growing trend toward supporting sustainable production, consumers are often unable to evaluate accurately which…

An effective way to teach about sustainability and environmentally conscious practices in German language, literature, and culture programs is within the context of a business German course. In this article we first situate educational sustainability in the US, leading into an examination of why the context of German business can be particularly…

We conducted in-depth interviews with 24 tall college females for the present phenomenological, qualitative research study. As tall females in our study described the impact of height on their self-perceptions, two over-arching key height-related outcomes emerged, each of which contained sub-components. First, participants described themselves as…

In many cultures, L2 students are reticent to engage in spontaneous oral L2 production. In Chinese culture, social norms tend to place value on accuracy, which tends to inhibit learners from authentic oral use of the target language. The purpose of this study was to consider the impact of costume, as used in L2 drama, on L2 selves, and attitudes…

When the author was growing up in East Los Angeles his mother told him about the "classy" gangsters of East L.A. who wore Zoot Suits. Through research, he learned that the Zoot Suiters were much more than well-dressed Latinos: they had a sense of honor and pride and exhibited class under adverse circumstances. In August of 1942, Jose Diaz, a…

In this article, we analyse schoolchildren's clothing at the village school of Rautiosaari in northern Finland between 1909 and 1939. Accordingly, we describe the kind of clothes that schoolgirls and schoolboys used during the target period. Interviews with elderly people were used as sources for the study. The research had a micro-historical…

The goal of this paper is to illustrate how the promotion of 21st Century process skills can be used to enhance student learning and workplace skill development: thinking, problem solving, collaboration, communication, leadership, and management. As an illustrative case, fashion merchandising and design students conducted research for a…

Sociologists have developed compelling pedagogical strategies to focus the undergraduate gaze on problems of gender and sexuality. Nested within the social construction of gender norms, the sexualization of girls and women negatively impacts individual, interpersonal, and societal levels of social interaction. Nevertheless, this important issue…

The dialectical relationship between social justice, active participation and the development of aesthetic sensibilities is re-emerging as a theme among art and design educators as concerns mount for the future of art and design education in the curriculum--particularly in the UK, but also internationally. This article explores the potential of…

The construction of social identity is an interdisciplinary term, which is a favourite topic for many scholars worldwide. Religion and identity are intertwined regarding the concept of identity construction. In Iran, this relation can best be seen through English as a Foreign Language (EFL) textbooks. To achieve this, this study investigates the…

With a point of departure in a transactional understanding of epistemology, the purpose of this paper is to explore practical epistemologies in physical education (PE) by investigating how knowledge is produced and reproduced in students' and teachers' actions in PE practices posted as clips on the user-generated video-sharing website…

This article demonstrates how one woman's identity changed as she was empowered through her participation in a sewing cooperative community of practice. A community of practice framework allows examination of participation in ongoing negotiated interactions in which people construct expert and novice identities as they work together. Identity, as…

Practicing teachers are partners in preparation of teacher trainees. However, little is known about their perceptions of the teacher trainees they receive every year in their schools. Ninety three practicing teachers from twenty schools participated in this study. The objectives were to find out the practicing teachers' perceptions of teacher…