A curricular renaissance: graduate education centered on occupation.
A 3-year project of curricular renaissance undertaken by the faculty of an entry-level master's degree program is described. This project culminated in a thoroughly redesigned program of study centered around the construct of occupation and built on a foundation of knowledge in occupational science. Described herein are three developmental and highly iterative domains of activity that were crucial to the project's success: (a) environmental scanning and analysis, (b) creation of a compelling future vision of occupational therapy, and (c) curriculum planning. Also detailed are especially salient assumptions and beliefs about graduate education as well as seven themes that encompass the program's academic content and illustrate its defining emphases. These themes are (a) occupation, (b) the human as an occupational being, (c) occupation as a medium of change, (d) clinical reasoning, (e) ethical reasoning, (f) investigative reasoning, and (g) occupational therapists as scholars and change agents in systems. The article concludes with reflections on innovation in graduate education in occupational therapy today.
Wood
W
W
Department of Allied Health Sciences, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill 27599-7120, USA. wwood@css.unc.edu
Nielson
C
C
Humphry
R
R
Coppola
S
S
Baranek
G
G
Rourk
J
J
D003479:Curriculum; D004500:Education, Graduate; D006801:Humans; D016273:Occupational Exposure; D009788:Occupational Therapy / Q000193:education*; D014481:United States