Empowerment and occupation: A new perspective.

Background: The idea of empowerment permeates the occupational therapy literature yet has received little critical reflection from occupational therapy's theorists.

Purpose: This paper aims to explore the concept of empowerment and highlight a recent definition that resonates with occupational therapists' core values.

Key Issues: Empowerment is generally understood to be a process of bestowing power and giving ability to someone deficient in both.

Critical reflections on occupational justice: Toward a rights-based approach to occupational opportunities.

Background: Occupational justice is cited throughout the occupational science and occupational therapy literatures despite little scholarly attention either to its definition or to how situations of occupational justice are identifiable.

Purpose: This paper aims to contribute a critique of occupational justice, explore the concepts of justice and (occupational) rights, and support a capabilities approach to inform rights-based occupational therapy practices.

Key Issues: No clear definition of occupational justice or differentiation from social justice exists despite the longevity of the concept, and theorists frequently confuse the concepts of justice and rights.

Occupational injustice: A critique.

Background: Although the idea of occupational injustice pervades the occupational therapy literature, there has been little scholarly debate concerning this construct or the parameters of the five identified forms of occupational injustice.

Purpose: The aims of this paper are to highlight conceptual confusions, foreground some inherent questions that have been neither acknowledged nor addressed, and question the theoretical and practical utility of five manifestations of occupational injustice.

Key Issues: Few theorists have contributed to the occupational injustice literature.

Belonging, occupation, and human well-being: an exploration.

Background: Researchers identify the importance of belonging to human well-being and provide evidence-based support for occupation as a medium for expressing and achieving a sense of belonging and connectedness.

Purpose: The purpose of this article is to highlight the imperative for occupational therapy theory and practice to address occupations concerned with belonging needs.

Key Issues: Dominant occupational therapy models emphasise doing self-care, productive, and leisure occupations, thereby ignoring occupations undertaken to contribute to the well-being of others, occupations that foster connections to nature and ancestors, collaborative occupations, and those valued for their social context and potential to strengthen social roles.

Occupation, well-being, and culture: Theory and cultural humility.

Background: The Canadian Model of Occupational Performance and Engagement depicts individuals embedded within cultural environments that afford occupational possibilities. Culture pertains not solely to ethnicity or race but to any dimension of diversity, including class, gender, sexual orientation, and ability.

Purpose: This paper highlights specific dimensions of cultural diversity and their relationships to occupational engagement and well-being.

Client-centred occupational therapy in Canada: refocusing on core values.

Background: The Canadian occupational therapy profession has proclaimed its allegiance to client-centred practice for three decades. However, official definitions of client-centred practice have been inconsistent, and its defining features, underlying assumptions, and power relations have been subjected to little critical reflection.

Purpose: The aim was to reflect critically on Canadian conceptions of client-centred practice and its core values.

Client-centred practice in occupational therapy: critical reflections.

Aims: The occupational therapy profession has long proclaimed its commitment to a client-centred philosophy of practice and the assumption that occupational therapists consistently practice in a client-centred manner has become central to the profession's self-image and public rhetoric. However, client-centred practice has been subjected to little critical reflection within the occupational therapy profession. The aim of this paper is to foster critical reflection concerning the authenticity and veracity of the profession's commitment to client-centred practices.

Sharing the agenda: pondering the politics and practices of occupational therapy research.

Aims: Occupational therapists espouse a client-centred philosophy of practice, yet little attention has been given to pondering the politics or client-centred practices of occupational therapy research. The aim of this paper is thus to foster reflection on occupational therapy's commitment to client-centredness in the practice of occupational therapy research.

Major Findings: Occupational therapy research is not consistently undertaken in a collaborative manner.

Spinal cord injury rehabilitation research: patient priorities, current deficiencies and potential directions.

Purpose. To highlight research priorities of people with spinal cord injury (SCI), outline the current state of rehabilitation research and suggest potentially fruitful avenues for future inquiry. Method.