Andrea Bilics

Explicit or Hidden? Exploring How Occupation Is Taught in Occupational Therapy Curricula in the United States

OBJECTIVE. Occupation is considered core and threshold knowledge for occupational therapy, yet how it is conveyed through education is not well understood. This study examined how the concept of occupation was taught in occupational therapy and occupational therapy assistant curricula in the United States. METHOD. Using a qualitative descriptive research design, in-depth interviews, video recordings, and artifacts of teaching occupation were collected from 25 programs, chosen using stratified random sampling. Interview data were analyzed using an inductive, constant comparative approach; video and artifact data were analyzed deductively using findings from the interviews. RESULTS. Instructional methods were innovative and ranged from didactic to experiential. The degree to which occupation was present in instruction ranged from explicit to implicit to absent. CONCLUSION. Although educators valued teaching occupation, the concept was still elusive in some instructional methods and materials. Occupation knowledge and pedagogical content knowledge may have influenced how explicitly occupation was taught.

Scholarship and research in occupational therapy education.

OBJECTIVE. The purpose of this study was to identify a baseline or benchmark for faculty engagement and productivity in occupational therapy education scholarship and research. METHOD. A custom-designed survey was emailed to 2,225 faculty members. The survey included questions on basic demographic information and education scholarship (e.g., use of evidence to inform teaching, frequency and nature of involvement in education scholarship. RESULTS. A total of 520 faculty members (23%) completed the survey. Of these, 450 (86.5%) identified themselves as full-time core faculty, and only their responses were analyzed. Although 90% of the faculty respondents engaged in scholarly teaching, only 34% identified education as an area of content expertise, and only 16% reported frequent involvement with education scholarship. Instructional methods were the primary area of study. CONCLUSION. A need exists to build research capacity for education research and more diversification of education research topics, including professional socialization and competencies.

A Way of Seeing: How Occupation Is Portrayed to Students When Taught as a Concept Beyond Its Use in Therapy

OBJECTIVE. The concept of occupation is core to learning occupational therapy, yet how occupation is taught has not been widely studied. We explored how occupation is addressed in 25 U.S. occupational therapist and occupational therapy assistant programs. METHOD. We used a basic qualitative research design, collecting data through interviews, artifacts, and video recordings of teaching. We secondarily analyzed 8 programs in which occupation was taught beyond its application in practice. RESULTS. Educators portrayed occupation as (1) a way of seeing self (students learn about themselves as occupational beings), (2) a way of seeing others (students learn about others as occupational beings), and (3) a way of seeing the profession (students learn occupation as the central focus of occupational therapy). Varied learning experiences promoted these perspectives. CONCLUSION. Three concepts—subject‐centered learning, threshold concepts, and transformative learning—formed the theoretical foundation for teaching occupation as a way of seeing. Price, P., Hooper, B., Krishnagiri, S., Taff, S. D., & Bilics, A. (2017). A way of seeing: How occupation is portrayed to students when taught as a concept beyond its use in therapy.

Balancing Efficacy and Effectiveness with Philosophy, History, and Theory-Building in Occupational Therapy Education Research

The preferred focus for education research in occupational therapy increasingly rests on studies that investigate efficacy and effectiveness in the teaching-learning context. While important, the almost exclusive promotion of outcomes-focused studies can come at the expense of other forms of inquiry, including philosophy, history, and theory-building. To fully inform education and enhance practice, outcomes-focused research needs the conceptual foundation provided by philosophical, historical, and theory-building studies. In this paper, the authors suggest that the research enterprise in occupational therapy education is in its infancy and, therefore, quite susceptible to shortcuts that head straight to outcomes. To address this issue, the authors promote an approach where theory-building studies and philosophical explorations both precede and enrich all research endeavors, including those aimed at identifying “what works” in professional education.

Curriculum-Level Strategies That U.S. Occupational Therapy Programs Use to Address Occupation: A Qualitative Study

OBJECTIVE. This studys objective was to describe curriculum‐level strategies used to convey occupation to occupational therapy students. METHOD. The study used a descriptive qualitative research design. Fifteen occupational therapy and 10 occupational therapy assistant programs participated in interviews, submitted curriculum artifacts such as syllabi and assignments, and recorded teaching sessions. Data were coded both inductively and deductively and then categorized into themes. RESULTS. Occupational therapy programs designed strategies on two levels of the curriculum, infrastructure and implementation, to convey knowledge of occupation to students. The degree to which strategies explicitly highlighted occupation and steered instruction fluctuated depending on how differentiated occupation was from other concepts and skills. CONCLUSION. Two arguments are presented about the degree to which occupation needs to be infused in all curricular elements. To guide curriculum design, it is critical for educators to discuss beliefs about how ubiquitous occupation is in a curriculum and whether curricular elements portray occupation to the extent preferred.

Teaching knowledge generated through occupational science and teaching the science itself

ABSTRACT This paper reviewed data that were collected for a study on teaching occupation in the context of occupational therapy programs, in order to explore if and how teaching occupational science was represented. Data that referenced occupational science were sparse but the available instances allowed observations to be made about teaching occupational science. Teaching the concepts and research findings of occupational science was more prevalent than teaching the science itself, raising questions about the implications of dispersing concepts from occupational science across a curriculum detached from their origins. Implications related to curricula, professional identity and translational science are explored. Suggestions are made for teaching concepts in explicit connection to occupational science, as well as stand-alone education about the science.

Preparing occupational therapy students to address mental health promotion, prevention, and intervention in school-based practice

ABSTRACT Directors of entry-level occupational therapy (OT) programs were surveyed regarding how their programs prepare students to become mental health practitioners in schools. Analysis of quantitative data included descriptive statistics to examine participants’ ratings of their program’s ability to prepare students for mental health practice. We found that OT education programs address the role of school-based occupational therapists but provide limited didactic and experiential learning opportunities relating to OT’s role in mental health promotion, prevention, and intervention in schools.

Traversing hills and valleys: Exploring doing, being, becoming and belonging experiences in teaching and studying occupation

ABSTRACT Research findings in occupational science and occupational therapy education can be mutually informing, yet this mutual benefit is seldom explored. A secondary analysis of data from a study of how occupation is addressed in US occupational therapy curricula explored this question: what latent meanings within education research data are pertinent to occupational science? Data were selected that richly described the tandem occupations of teaching and learning where the focus was occupation-related content. Three processes adopted from Ricœurian hermeneutic interpretive analysis—explanation, understanding, and appropriation—revealed the occupational experiences of doing, being, becoming and belonging as a dynamic web among instructors and students who participated in the study and the researchers. Further, the analytic process united the occupational experiences of research participants and researchers, and prompted researchers to reflect on and engage emotionally with their teaching and other occupations, facilitating appropriation of the research for their classroom practices.