Pedagogy and Professional Development

Utilizing the Personal Science Framework to Teach Research Methods and Theories in a Graduate Fashion and Merchandising Class

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Abstract

At a primarily undergraduate institution, the College of Business offers an MBA with a fashion merchandising and management concentration that includes a Concepts and Theories in Fashion and Merchandising class. Among the course objectives are original research and the ability to use theory as a framework. The students in this program plan to or already work in corporate offices in the fashion industry and will likely not conduct academic research. The Retail Log project was developed to achieve the objectives and allow students to explore data in a way that would be relevant to their careers; students systematically collected, analyzed, and applied theories to their own consumer behavior. This project was designed based on personal science, "using empirical methods to explore personal questions" (Wolf & DeGroot, 2020, p. 2). The five "activities" that characterize personal science are Questioning, Designing, Observing, Reasoning, and Discovering, each addressed in the Retail Log project. 

Keywords: pedagogy, consumer behavior, retail log, shopping

How to Cite:

Jablon-Roberts, S., (2022) “Utilizing the Personal Science Framework to Teach Research Methods and Theories in a Graduate Fashion and Merchandising Class”, International Textile and Apparel Association Annual Conference Proceedings 79(1). doi: https://doi.org/10.31274/itaa.15773