Theoretical and practical command of Malaysia’s home economics students: A perception study from a public university

Mastering both the theoretical and practical aspects in technical and vocational education is important to produce skilled and competent human resource. This study examined the perceptions of Home Economics (HE) students at a Malaysian public university regarding their level of theoretical and practical mastery of a tailoring course. A total of 100 students from the Bachelor Degree of HE program participated in this study. The study was conducted through a survey using quantitative approach. Data from respondents were analyzed using SPSS version 18.0. The reliability of the questionnaire is α = .771. The findings showed that the perceptions on the level of mastery in theory was at moderate level (mean = 0.65) as also that in the practical (mean = 3.50). The ANOVA test indicated that there were no significant differences in the level of theory and practical training in tailoring course of HE students based on semesters. However, the Eta analysis found that there were three theoretical items and four practical items that had low correlations with the semesters. The Pearson r correlation analysis showed no significant correlations between the mastery of theory and practical among the HE students.