The beginning of the trajectory of occupational therapy academic institutionalization in Brazil: what pioneer professors tell about the creation of the first courses

The first technical courses of occupational therapy were structured in Brazil during the 1950’s, in the cities of Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo. The creation of these courses was stimulated by the great international mobilization around the expansion of the rehabilitation field around the world. In the following decades, other courses were founded in several Brazilian states and, the profession was simultaneously structured in the country, including the approval of some legislation that guaranteed academic quality parameters for the training of occupational therapists. In 1983, the publication of a resolution revising the foundations of the minimum curriculum for training in the field and requiring major reformulations within the existing and upcoming courses was the point of confirmation of the effective beginning of the academic institutionalization of occupational therapy in Brazil. This article is based on a research that aimed to describe the trajectory of academic institutionalization of occupational therapy in Brazil, focusing on the creation of the first course in 1956 and those implanted until 1983, according to the vision of the pioneer teachers. For that, work was done with the theoretical-methodological reference of oral history, from which the occupational therapists were interviewed, pioneering professors of the first courses, and constructed documents originating from their narratives, which were based on the trajectory of the courses presented here