Pedagogy and Professional Development

Teaching Fashion History Wild and Free: How We Dropped Our Textbooks and Improved Student Learning

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Abstract

For this project, two instructors redesigned their fashion history courses to be taught without a traditional textbook. One course was online and one was a hybrid flipped classroom in-person. We opted to move away from using a traditional textbook in Fashion History to increase our emphasis on diversity and to improve the inclusivity of the courses by reducing cost. Removing the textbook freed up time for students to work on additional homework assignments to apply what they had learned, which also expanded the available range of assessment opportunities; allowed increased usage of other resources such as video and museum databases; and enabled increased emphasis on diversity in the course, as well as affordable access. Resources used included videos, emphasizing period-recorded footage; instructor lectures/videos; garments from online museum collections; journal articles; and book chapters.  Instructors found that students showed more creativity, deeper thinking, and increased performance on assessments.

Keywords: fashion history, dress history, pedagogy, teaching, assessment, diversity, inclusion

How to Cite:

Armstead, C. C., Martindale, A. K. & McKinney, E., (2022) “Teaching Fashion History Wild and Free: How We Dropped Our Textbooks and Improved Student Learning”, International Textile and Apparel Association Annual Conference Proceedings 78(1). doi: https://doi.org/10.31274/itaa.13683