Learning by doing: creating knowledge for occupational therapy

Abstract

Occupational therapists open doors to occupation. The goal of occupational therapy is to enable people to engage in occupations that support and bring meaning to daily life. With this vision, we have a responsibility to create and use knowledge to ensure our commitment to the rights of all people to participate fully in daily life. Over the past 30 years, we have gained substantive knowledge from research from occupational therapy, occupational science and other disciplines. Sources of knowledge for occupational therapy come from person/people’s needs, values, dreams; therapists’ wisdom and reasoning; and research.In this paper, I examine how to use current knowledge and create the knowledge needed for the future. Specifically, I discuss dimensions of knowledge, knowledge creation frameworks, knowledge translation and the process of learning. We have a responsibility to build a knowledge creation process consistent with occupational therapy values. The creation and use of knowledge is complex and does not happen automatically. Given this complexity, we must guard against a focus on creating knowledge that applies universally and does not take into account culture, context and individual needs. Knowledge creation in occupational therapy can be a wonderful journey – bringing together experience and action to learn by doing.