Towards developing a decolonial transdisciplinary praxis that supports a socially-transformative occupational science: Emergent insights from an educational project in South Africa

Abstract

ABSTRACT As occupational science develops its socially transformative agenda, the discipline must learn how to ‘do’ a science that responds to complex social issues. Developing occupational science as a ‘transdisciplinary science’ has been indicated as a potential tool to do so. As such, this paper presents the emergent insights generated through attempting to engage a decolonial transdisciplinary praxis within health and rehabilitation sciences, as a contribution to the conceptual development of transdisciplinarity within the discipline. Reflections on the authors’ experiences of engaging in a project that intentionally brought undergraduate occupational therapy, speech-language pathology, audiology, and physiotherapy students together to collectively respond to justice and equity-related needs at a low-income school in Cape Town, South Africa, were used to generate these insights. Engaging in a context shaped by coloniality and apartheid, our reflections revealed three key notions that supported the decolonial enactment of a transdisciplinary practice: ‘Exploring how to un-discipline ourselves’; ‘Embracing the vulnerability of decolonising the self’; and ‘Intentionally occupying a liminal space’. Our further interpretation of what these notions meant for our practice culminated in what we saw as critical for the enactment of transdisciplinarity: How to conceptualise and work with a ‘praxis of uncertainty’. We discuss the potential value of the praxis of uncertainty in decolonial transdisciplinary work and offer impetus for its continued conceptual development, arguing that developing such knowledge could contribute to moving occupational science towards becoming a socially transformative discipline.