Rationale: In occupational therapy research, practice, and curriculum, there is growing acknowledgment that social oppression produces health inequities and limits individuals’ and communities’ occupational participation. However, strategies for addressing these inequities in everyday practice are still developing. This presentation explores how socio-political praxis—a dynamic interplay between theory and practice—can enable occupational therapists (OTs) to actively resist systems of oppression that shape service users’ health and occupational participation.
Objectives: Building on Aldrich and Rudman’s (2020) work conceptualizing OTs as “street-level bureaucrats,” we invite occupational therapists to become “street-level theorists,” whose praxis actively resists the socio-political forces that produce health inequities and occupational injustice.
Methods: Using participatory methods, five researchers collaborated with eight OTs working with structurally marginalized communities in a Canadian city. Co-creating a shared aim of “developing an ethical framework for socio-political praxis,” we engaged in a series of eight collaborative workshops focused on the iterative relationship between occupational therapy theory and practice, with attention to their socio-political dimensions.
Results: Reconceptualizing themselves as “street-level theorists,” OTs theorized their practice conditions and clinical reasoning processes, describing praxis as necessarily fluid, relational, uncertain, dynamic, and iterative. Desiring a contextually responsive tool rather than a rigid framework, we co-created an interactive toolkit aimed at supporting praxis that is attentive and responsive to shifting contexts of inequity and oppression.
Significance to the occupational therapy profession: Occupational therapy that engages in socio-political praxis has the potential to be more responsive to health inequities, moving beyond individualized treatment and toward contextually situated and anti-oppressive engagement.