A commentary on the social responsibility of occupational therapy education

As one of the allied health professions, occupational therapy has adopted a primarily clinical focus on human occupation (or the process of daily life) and this is reflected in education, which has until recently tended to overlook contextual social factors such as poverty, marginalisation, exclusion, unemployment, incarceration and immigration. However, daily life is enabled, and potentially dis-abled, along the axes of several cultural and political constructs, such as gender, employment status and ethnicity. This article presents a critical commentary of the social responsibility of occupational therapy education. Furthermore, it discusses the need for educational practices that can enact an integration of personal and professional perspectives so as to lead to a more holistic understanding of occupation, incorporating not only clinical but also social and political factors. This article argues for the development of a political approach to occupational therapy education that can lead to an awareness of the cultural influences that they bring to their workplace, and a critical consideration of concepts such as ‘justice’ and ‘occupation’. The development of a political practice of occupational therapy calls for an appreciation of the diversity of human occupation and the circumstances that enable it and can be realised through the establishment of innovative educational partnerships, such as community–university collaborations