Poster Session - A Systematic Mapping Review of Justice Notions in Occupational Science & Occupational Therapy Literature

Background: Occupational Science (OS) has brought into sharp focus the occupation-justice relationship to health and well being of individuals and society. In doing so, OS is recapitulating Occupational Therapy’s activist heritage of empowerment through occupation-based practice in order to promote social inclusion. Method: A systematic mapping review was performed to deconstruct how notions of justice have been woven into the professional and disciplinary literature. A broad sweep of the databases yielded a final cut of eighty-nine articles that met the inclusion criteria for this mapping review. A Framework Analysis method (Ritchie & Spencer, 2004) was used to code, categorize and analyze the extracted data for recurring themes. Results: Four broad categories with related sub-codes emerged from the analysis of the literature. Within the four broad categories, the article distribution was as follows: values of the profession (n = 34), social justice (n = 22), the practice environment (n = 21), and occupational justice (n = 12). The four major recurring themes were: (1) The health and well-being of individuals and groups are at risk when socially-constructed barriers prevent their participation in occupation; (2) Contextual and social conditions are determined by the dominant group; (3) Occupational therapy practitioners are called to be true to the profession’s core values; (4) Tensions exist between practice contexts and the values of the profession, creating a crisis in professional identity. Conclusion: The results reveal the irrevocable relationship of OS and OT that is bound together in their shared ethos for justice and human rights. The lynchpin between the discipline and the profession is the belief of occupation as a requisite for health, participation and social inclusion. Occupational science can help to not only bridge the gap between the ethos of the profession and current practice, but strengthen the profession’s identity and its contributions to societal health. Key words: Systematic mapping; justice; theory; practic