1. ONLINE, LIFELONG LEARNING FOR A SUSTAINABLE FASHION DESIGN.
- Author
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Guedes, Graça and Buest, Andreana
- Subjects
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ONLINE education , *SUSTAINABILITY , *LEARNING , *FASHION , *HIGHER education - Abstract
This paper aimed to understand how fashion design higher education programs are approaching fashion 'eco-design' initiatives and how or if this could influence the diffusion and adoption by the whole sector. Furthermore, this paper argued that online education, sustained by a lifelong learning perspective, would present a valid way to deliver and disseminate the knowledge about sustainable principles in business, technological, social and environmental practices, making them quickly available for professionals and companies and thus, promoting the competencies required to prospect meaningful changes in the sector. Part of broader research about fashion design education in the European Higher Education Area, this paper identified previously selected fashion design courses, delivered onsite and online, and analyzed their curriculum and syllabus, to determine how and if sustainability integrates the design project and development of fashion products. The results demonstrated that sustainability is articulated with the fashion design curriculum diversely with few programs presenting sustainability as a ‘design philosophy,' as a mindset for developing products and projects for the fashion sector. However, the findings of this study helped to acknowledge that sustainability, present either as a program strategy or as an approach for the development of fashion projects, form a competence complex and hard to measure since the market does not absorb it quickly and thus it is permanently and inevitably outdated. The ability to maintain fashion designer and companies updated represents the central advantage of an accredited online lifelong learning. Freed from the rigidity of traditional academic stages, calendar and physical limitations, online learning would be able to approach important themes, as well as adopt a prospective approach about sustainability in the fashion sector and then enable this knowledge to be easily accessed and diffused by professionals and companies in a flexible, adaptable and affordable manner. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]
- Published
- 2019
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