ABSTRACT

 This research is aimed at assessing students’ interest in clothing and textile area of home economics in Abia State, in the course ofthe research, four objectives and research questions were formulated. Descriptive survey research design was adopted for the study, data were sourced primarily through questionnaire. The questionnaire was issued to 300 respondents of which 240 questionnaires were fully completely and returned by the respondents. The data collected were analyzed using descriptive statistics where means and standard deviation were used for decision making. The result revealed that the level of enrolment into clothing and textile area of home economics is influenced by interest ofthe students, which was revealed with a grand mean of 3.5 which was above the benchmark of 3.0, the result also revealed that students have different perception about clothing and textile area of home economics with grand mean of 3.2 which is above the 3.0 benchmark, thirdly the challenges of clothing and textile area of home economics were listed as inadequate interest on the side ofstudents, inadequate resources, little or no time to practics among others with grand mean of 3.9 and lastly the strategies for improving the interest ofstudent in clothing and textile area ofthe course included provision of adequate infrastructure for teaching and learning of clothing and textile, encouraging the students to be selfreliant after school among others. The research concludes that clothing and textile area ofhome economics is as important as other areas ofthe course, hence there is need to ensure that no area is seen to be better than the other area, the research also concludes that there is need for adequate provision of teaching and learning resources to improve students interest in the clothing and textile area of home economics, the study also recommends that students ofhome economics, especially clothing and textile should be good ambassadors oftheir department to aid erase the wrong perception of students about the course and also improve the interest ofprospective students