1 - Sustainable apparel technical and vocational education and training (TVET): integrating technology for skills training

Abstract

The crisis of the Covid-19 pandemic has reshaped the apparel industry into becoming more sustainable, more human-centered, and more technologically adaptive. The sustainable apparel education model contains three pedagogical elements which are knowledge, skills, and technology. Sustainable knowledge is the core of apparel education which interlinks the sustainable knowledge curricula and the mainstream knowledge curricula. Future apparel knowledge should have a combined curriculum because the apparel industry needs to produce sustainable apparel for future environmental societies. In addition, with apparel education moving towards total digitization by adopting technology as the tool for teaching and learning, TVET (Technical and Vocational Education and Training) educators in the future will need to be conversant towards technology for imparting skill education from design to production. Subsequently, when the workforce becomes more skillful having assimilated the TVET skills education in their work efforts, they will produce apparel products that have good quality, have better fit, are functional, and can meet the garment requirements. TVET education is the solution for the skill development of skilled workers and designers who understand the importance of garment specifications, are knowledgeable on how to make them last longer, have awareness about theirs meeting life expectancy, and thus are adept at preventing garments from being thrown at the landfill faster than they should be. In a nutshell, proposing TVET education as the solution to human capital development will drive a sustainable apparel industry in the future.