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.