DEVELOPMENT OF HAIRDRESSING CURRICULUM FOR INTEGRATION INTO HOME ECONOMICS EDUCATION PROGRAMME OF UNIVERSITIES

The major purpose of this study was to develop hairdressing curriculum for integration into Home Economics Education programme of universities in the South-East, Nigeria. Specifically, the study determined the: instructional objectives to be integrated; content

(knowledge, skills and attitudes) in hairdressing; instructional methods that could be adopted in teaching; instructional materials/media to be utilized in teaching hairdressing; evaluation activities that could be employed in teaching hairdressing; developed a draft hairdressing curriculum (HDC), validated the draft HDC, revised the hairdressing curriculum based on the inputs from the validates and determined how effectiveness of the developed hairdressing curriculum. The study adopted the research and development design (R & D). It was carried out into five major phases: phase I – collection of data using hairdressing questionnaire (HDQ), phase II – development of hairdressing curriculum based on the objectives, content, delivery systems and evaluation activities, phase III – validation of the draft of hairdressing curriculum by experts, phase IV – assessment of the draft hairdressing curriculum using hairdressing test (HDT) and phase V: revision of HDC based on information from phase III and IV. The population was made up of 5057 hairdressing respondents comprising of 32 Home Economics lecturers, 4900 hairdressers and 125 final year Home Economics students. 400 hairdressers were purposively selected. No sample for final year Home Economics students and Home Economics lecturers. Four sets of instruments were utilized for data collection. HDQ was face validated by three experts from University of Nigeria, Nsukka. HDQ was tried out and the result obtained was used for the computation of reliability coefficient using Cronbach alpha. The following coefficients were obtained for each of the clusters: cluster B = 0.95, cluster C = 0.97, cluster D =0.93, cluster D(m/m) = 0.88 and cluster E = 0.94. The draft of HDC developed was validated by experts namely: three hairdressers, three Home Economics lecturers and three curriculum experts. Mean was used to analyze research questions 1 to 5, ANOVA was used to analyze hypotheses 1 to 5 while ANCOVA was used to analyze research question 6. The findings included 34 objectives, 68 item content (knowledge, skills and attitudes), 45 delivery systems (23 instructional methods and 22 instructional materials/media) and 29 evaluation activities for assessing the attainment of HDC. There were no significant differences in the mean responses of hairdressers, final year Home Economics students and Home Economics lecturers on the hypotheses tested. Based on the findings, it was recommended among others that (1) Home Economics students should be adequately exposed to learning experiences identified in this study to enable them to be self employed;

(2) Curriculum planners should utilize the objectives, content, instructional methods, instructional materials/media and evaluation activities identified in this study for reviewing and re-planning the curriculum; (3) Textbooks and other instructional materials should be developed and made available to further assist the students understanding; (4) There is the need that hairdressing curriculum be included into Home Economics education because of the new reforms in education and (5) students should form saving habit while in school for starting up hairdressing business units after graduation.