Politicizing Children's Play: A Community Photovoice Process to Transform a School Playground

IMPORTANCE

 Contextual elements at school playgrounds compromise the right to play. An occupation-based social transformation project to foster occupational justice in play at a school playground was conducted.

OBJECTIVE

 To better understand barriers to and facilitators of children's participation in occupations at the school playground to co-create actions that enable play.  Design: A participatory methodology-Photovoice-was used. The research consisted of four phases: involving the community in the research design, community-led data generation and analysis, discussion of findings to increase the community's awareness, and a community agenda for changing the playground.

SETTING

Public primary school playground in northwest Spain.

PARTICIPANTS

All children (n = 450, ages 3-12 yr), families (n = 12), and teachers (n = 15) participated. A thematic analysis of visual, textual, and oral material was conducted, including member checking.  Results: The study revealed several barriers to play, including the short recess duration, poor floor (surface) conditions, jail-like atmosphere, and violence. However, participants identified an ad hoc lending games system and playground murals advocating for children's rights as facilitators. These findings have direct implications for improving the play environment.

CONCLUSIONS AND RELEVANCE

 Conflicting priorities between children's and adults' desires and needs for the playground were unveiled, displaying the relevance of invisible contexts (i.e., social or institutional contexts) in shaping play opportunities. A critical occupational stance combined with a participatory and playful methodology generated space to unveil these conflicting priorities, reconcile agendas, raise awareness, and propose collective actions to transform the playground. Plain-Language Summary: Playing is fundamental to children's development and inclusion. This study focused on making school playgrounds better places for kids to play. Researchers found that things such as short playtimes, bad playground conditions, and violence made it tough for kids to enjoy playing, but they also discovered some good things, such as a system for borrowing games and colorful murals promoting children' rights. These findings show that changing the playground's physical and social environment can make a big difference for kids. By listening to kids and working together, adults and children can create playgrounds where all kids can play meaningfully and safely. Occupational therapists can promote such processes.

Float to grow: nurturing the roots of socially inclusive and just practice in occupational therapy students

Abstract Models of practice and theoretical frameworks that seek to deemphasize impairment and focus on the implications of societal attitudes, norms, and culture are significant and relevant to the practice of occupational therapy. As an underpinning of client-centered practice, there is a need to highlight and embrace the intersection of impairment-deemphasizing theories and move from conceptual understanding to true application of those theoretical models in practice. This article describes the inclusion of the Salamander Workshop; an experiential learning activity designed to facilitate the development of students’ therapeutic self-awareness and initiate a starting point for incorporating social frameworks into authentic practice. Student reflections conceptualize the discussion about professional growth and development against the backdrop of disability experiences, social change, and empowerment. The article begins with an introduction to how the profession of occupational therapy and disability studies interconnect. This is followed by a description of both the occupational therapy education program where the experiential learning activity took place, and details of the workshop itself. The final two sections of the article articulate and discuss student reflections of the experiential learning exercise and conclude by framing the discussion within the larger context of occupational therapy pedagogy. The Salamander Workshop facilitated an opportunity for students to immerse themselves in the lived experience of others, while enhancing their own self-awareness, which in turn may translate to their growth and development as inclusive practitioners.

Professional competencies required by occupational therapists to facilitate the participation of persons with mental disability in work: A review of the literature

BACKGROUND

Unemployment rates are generally higher among persons with mental disabilities who experience many barriers and challenges that limit their participation in work and employment. Occupational therapy can play a key role in promoting participation and engagement in work by persons with mental disabilities.

OBJECTIVE

This review sought to identify the barriers and facilitators to work participation for persons with mental disabilities globally in comparison to Zimbabwe, and to identify the competencies related to work practice in occupational therapy curricula internationally and regionally.

METHODS

A narrative literature review was conducted using the SALSA (Search, Appraisal, Synthesis and Analysis) framework which informed retrieval and analysis of articles published between 2012 and 2018.

RESULTS

Fifty-one out of 227 articles were selected to inform the review. A synthesis of the literature provided insights and ideas on facilitators and barriers to work for persons with mental disabilities and the competencies related to work practice in occupational therapy curricula.

CONCLUSION

Barriers to participation in work for persons with mental disabilities are real. However, occupational therapists from different contexts have a variety of competencies to facilitate participation in work. There is a need to develop work practice competencies particular to the Zimbabwean context.

Using Occupational Justice as a Linchpin of International Educational Collaborations

When designing international educational collaborations, occupational science and occupational therapy educators must consider how occupational justice can be a linchpin for students' learning. This article describes an international collaboration involving 52 undergraduate occupational science students in the United States and 41 undergraduate occupational therapy students in South Africa. The students participated in six synchronous video conferences in 2016, during which they gave group presentations about four occupational science constructs and engaged in general question-and-answer sessions. Forty percent of the students provided feedback about the interactions using a six-item open-ended electronic questionnaire, which we analyzed using directed content analysis. Our findings suggest that the collaboration helped the students develop more nuanced understandings of disciplinary constructs, international peers, and themselves, providing a platform from which to engage with the big idea of occupational justice. Refinements to this collaboration are aimed at drawing on students' increased critical consciousness to further develop their knowledge about occupational justice.

Begging abroad in Sweden: An interview study

Background: The occurrence of begging by poor people from other countries in the European Union (EU) is now common in Scandinavia. They have a challenging life, but there is little knowledge about their own perceptions of their stay abroad.Aim: To explore the experiences of EU citizens begging in Sweden.Material: A descriptive design was used. Data were gathered through individual interviews conducted in Romanian and translated into Swedish. These were analysed using conventional content analysis. Participants were 20 EU citizens aged 19-64 years with experience of begging in Sweden.Results: The identified main category, "A hard time abroad to improve one's life", contained four categories - "Endurance is required to make a living"; "Exposed to others' attitudes and kindness"; "Handling being away"; and "A better life is the driving force".Conclusions and significance: EU citizens who beg face occupational injustice, spending many hours in non-preferred activity of begging and with few leisure activities, although no generalizations can be drawn based on this study. The importance of a friendly attitude and environmental support when abroad was also shown. Since occupational justice is within the scope of occupational therapy, occupational therapists have the skills to contribute in collaboration with others.

Justice and U.S. Occupational Therapy Practice: A Relationship 100 Years in the Making

At 99 years old, occupational therapy is a global health care profession with a growing orientation toward justice. Because much of the occupational justice discourse has developed outside the United States, parallels between the profession's ethos and its current focus on justice must be examined more closely in this country. Although occupational therapy practitioners in the United States are better equipped than their predecessors with language and theories that explicitly emphasize justice, the potential for bringing that focus to bear depends on practitioners' willingness to think differently about their practices. We argue that a focus on justice can be naturally integrated with curriculum standards by emphasizing the link between cultural humility, client-centeredness, and embodied habits of "seeking out unknown others." Outside formal education, practitioners can be encouraged to think of justice as something that already intersects with practice, not something that practitioners must choose whether to take up.

Ethical Tensions Related to Systemic Constraints

Ethical tensions arise daily in health care practice and are frequently related to health care system structures or policies. Collective case study methodology was adopted to examine ethical tensions reported by occupational therapists practicing in different settings in Southwestern Ontario, Canada. Inductive analysis involving multiple layers of coding was conducted. This article focuses on tensions related to systemic constraints. Participants reported ethical tensions related to balancing client priorities with those of health care services. Four themes related to systemic constraints were identified including imposed practices, ineffective processes, resource limitations, and lack of services. Therapists’ aims could be seen to align with an “ethic of care” and were seen to be in tension in light of systemic constraints. The findings raise issues related to occupational justice, particularly related to occupational alienation in occupational therapy practice, and open conversations related to neoliberalist health care agendas.

The Dr Elizabeth Casson Memorial Lecture 2016: Occupational alienation – A concept for modelling participation in practice and research

The Dr Elizabeth Casson Memorial Lecture 2016, given on June 29th 2016 at the 40th Annual Conference and Exhibition of the College of Occupational Therapists, held at the Harrogate International Centre, Harrogate, UK.

Translating Occupational Justice Education Into Action: Reflections From an Exploratory Single Case Study

There is a growing body of scholarly literature about occupational justice, human rights, and power redistribution ready to be integrated into occupational science and occupational therapy education. As students around the world become familiar with the concepts and intents underlying occupational justice, it will be important to investigate their translation of occupational justice understandings into actions outside the classroom. This exploratory single case study describes curricular, university, and regional factors related to one former student's engagement in social protests following her occupational justice education. Based on her reflections, we emphasize the need to provide classroom opportunities where students can apply and critically reflect on (a) knowledge about occupational justice and (b) unintended consequences and potential professional tensions that may arise in relation to pursuing occupational justice. Future research will benefit from broader comparative studies that analyze personal, contextual, and programmatic differences among instances of occupational justice education and students' engagement in occupational reconstructions.