Threads of Learning
1. Enacting Professional Citizenship
As professional citizens, our students are attuned to and responsive to local and global issues relevant to the profession, occupation and society. As professional citizens, occupational therapists promote the profession and enact the transformative power of occupation with a variety of individuals and collectives. Professional citizenship encompasses being accountable to professional organizations, standards, guidelines, behaviours and the people with whom we work. This occurs in everyday practice where we work as leaders, advocates, educators and mentors.
2. Attending to Diversity
Diversity is defined as “those human differences that are noticed and deemed to matter within specific social structures, becoming matters of power inequalities” (Beagan, 2015, p.273). This means diversity is not ‘natural’ and given; it is produced through social relations and varies depending on one’s point of view. As occupational therapists, attending to diversity involves expanding beyond over-simplified notions of diversity in relation to ethnicity or culture toward recognizing a wide-range of intersecting differences that reflect taken-for-granted social hierarchies. (Grenier, Zafran, & Roy, 2020). These value-laden hierarchies contribute to inequities in relation to occupational possibilities, health and well-being, and life chances. Attending to diversity involves setting aside assumptions that locate the ‘problem’ of diversity at the level of individuals. Instead, occupation-focused practice, teaching and research should incorporate recognition of the ways that human difference is socially and politically organized in ways that benefit particular groups and marginalize or disadvantage others on the basis of difference (Trentham, Cockburn, Cameron, & Iwama, 2007). Understanding diversity as an idea that is produced through social relations, rather than a trait located within individuals, opens opportunities for learners to think more broadly about the transformative power of occupation and related values that inform our School’s vision and mission.
3. Applying Critical Perspectives to Occupation
Critical perspectives on occupation have evolved from scholarship that has mobilized a range of critical social theoretical perspectives to resist conceptualizing occupations as solely individually determined or as equitably distributed, turning attention to ‘occupation as situated’ and ‘occupational as political’ (Gerlach, Teachman, Laliberte Rudman, Aldrich & Huot, 2018; Hammell, 2020). The application of critical perspectives within research on occupation has generated a wealth of knowledge regarding how occupations are always situated within, and contribute to the shaping of, social, cultural, political, economic, and other contextual conditions (Laliberte Rudman, Aldrich & Kiepek, 2022). Critical perspectives on occupation also turn attention to how occupation, and occupational therapy, are situated in social relations of power that simultaneously produce privilege and marginalization, as well as how occupation can be used as means to resist oppression and enact social transformation (Aldrich & Laliberte Rudman, 2020; Galvaan & Rauch van der Merwe, 2021; Laliberte Rudman et al., 2022).
4. Honouring Indigenous Ways of Knowing, Being and Doing
Indigenous Peoples have lived on the lands in which Canada has been built upon for millennia and engaged in cultural practices that have sustained themselves, their families, and their Nations. Historical and ongoing colonialism has deeply impacted the unique and diverse ways of knowing, being, and doing amongst Indigenous Peoples and Nations, with colonialism pinpointed as a root determinant of health for Indigenous Peoples (Egan & Restall, 2022; Czyzewski, 2011; Reading & Wien, 2009). Honouring and illuminating Indigenous epistemologies are fundamental to how we understand diverse human occupations beyond Western ideologies and worldviews that have and continue to dominate mainstream spaces, including post-secondary education and health care through cultural imperialism (Smith, 2018). Further, Indigenous Peoples and their ways of knowing, being, and doing teach us the importance of Nation, community, family, and land connections, and how the complex interaction amongst us and our surroundings shape how we understand the world through our past, present and future. Moving beyond recognition that our school is situated on the traditional lands of the Anishinaabek, Haudenosaunee, Lūnaapéewak and Chonnonton peoples, we actively commit to work toward a shared and collaborative vision of Indigenous equity. This is done through the privileging of Indigenous rights, sovereignty, and self-determination for all Indigenous Peoples and Nations as well as through the amplification and deep respect of Indigenous perspectives and voices. Through the 4 R’s of respect, relevance, reciprocity, and responsibility (Kirkness & Barnhardt, 2001) and the guiding principle of Two-Eyed Seeing (Barlett, Marshall, & Marshall, 2012), we ensure that Indigenous ways of knowing, being, and doing are drawn from and demonstrated as having great significance, value, and need - not only to occupational therapy, health care, or education – but in our pursuit to problem solve society’s most complex challenges and crises.
5. Ethical Practice
Occupational therapists are expected to commit to good practice, and deciding what is good means judiciously and systematically discerning what is right (COTO, 2020), just and fair. This can only be achieved through the ongoing application of reflection and critical reflexivity in everyday practices (Kinsella & Pitman, 2012). Occupational therapists need to be able to recognize ethical tensions and then decide on the best course of action. These ethical deliberations are known to permeate practice (Bushy et al., 2015). Ethical practice involves the application of various, and at times competing, ethical principles, theories, and philosophies (Beauchamp & Childress, 2013; Carnevale et all., 2017; Drolet, 2018; McCorquodale, 2015).
