Abstract:

Textile and clothing, one of the most important sectors of activity in Europe with more than 3 million persons employed, has been severely affected by crisis and restructuring processes and is in a pressing need of more skilled employees especially with regard to competencies related to innovation and sustainability. These competencies are not adequately addressed by traditional VET courses so, more effective training approaches are needed. Among them, Flipped Learning (FL) has recently attracted much attention as a way to implement more learner-centred environments and foster students’ engagement and motivation toward the achievement of better learning outcomes.

The overall aim of this study was to gain a better understanding of how FL has been adopted so far in Textile, Clothing and Fashion education (RQ1), to identify the most relevant benefits and issues of adopting a flipped approach in Textile, Clothing and Fashion education (RQ2 and RQ3), and to analyse the most common drivers/barriers to the adoption of a flipped approach in Textile, Clothing and Fashion education (RQ4).

In order to achieve this goal, a review of the available literature on this subject has been conducted in renowned journal databases: Scopus, IEEE-Xplore, Science Direct, Scholar. A total of 30 articles were found in this first stage of the research. Two researchers separately analysed the title, the abstract and the keywords of each article to identify the relevant ones, finally selecting 12 articles out of the original 30.

The results of the analysis show that the FL methodology has been applied at a university level in most of the studies examined (n=7). There is just one case in high school and post-college degree, and three cases in professional courses.

Regarding the technological tools used in flipped classes, in most cases, video lessons were the preferred solution for out-of-class learning activities, often integrated with other materials or resources like blogs, audio, interactive exercises, wikis, etc.

In the studies analysed, several benefits of the FL were observed. Students appreciated the possibility to watch and re-watch the video lessons as many times as they needed and were more engaged by in-class activities such as group exercises and simulations. Teachers recognised that adopting this approach contributed to creating a positive learning environment in the class and gave them the possibility to intervene in a more personal and direct way, to correct or help students that showed difficulties.

In many studies, the statistics about the final exams or tests showed an overall improvement.

As for the risks that this new method could entail, one of the possible issues is given by the difficulties of adapting to this new method for both students and teachers. For instance, if students don’t prepare lessons prior to class, the entire FL idea falls apart and the uncooperative students’ risk being left behind.

Among the most common barriers preventing the adoption of FL, there is the need for students to have efficient access to a device and internet connection, the fact that re-organizing a course with the FL approach is time-consuming and labour-intensive for teachers, and the fact that a lack of motivation and discipline, and a refusal to accept change (from both students and teachers) could prevent its use.

Keywords:

Flipped classroom, VET education, company training, active learning.