Northern philosophies and professional neocolonialism in occupational therapy: a historical review and critique

ABSTRACT In this article, the authors conduct a historical review of recent philosophies influencing the Occupational Therapy profession in the United States (analytic philosophy and Continental varieties such as neopragmatism). Four philosophical categories are explored: epistemology, axiology, ontology, and praxis. The dominant strand of analytic philosophy is characterized by reductionist views of knowledge and reality, with little sustained attention to ethics and practical action. Competing but lesser recognized Continentally-inspired philosophies offer a critical and more phenomenological approach which values human subjectivities, narratives, and social agency. The authors argue that the dominance of analytic philosophy has created the intellectual foundations for neoliberalism to thrive and permeate the profession of Occupational Therapy in its curricula, practice models, reimbursement systems, and research agenda. As this Northern (United States) version of Occupational Therapy expands globally, the danger exists for professional neocolonialism to occur which can negatively influence or contradict more local ways of knowing and doing. The article concludes by offering strategies to unmask, disentangle, and dismantle Occupational Therapy from its Northern roots towards wider acceptance of Southern epistemologies, ethics, and collective action.

The ‘haves’ and ‘have-nots’ of personal protective equipment during the COVID-19 pandemic: the ethics of emerging inequalities amongst healthcare workers

The COVID-19 pandemic has exacerbated inequalities, including among the healthcare workforce. Based on recent literature and drawing on our experiences of working in operating theatres and critical care in the UK’s National Health Service during the pandemic, we review the role of personal protective equipment and consider the ethical implications of its design, availability and provision at a time of unprecedented demand. Several important inequalities have emerged, driven by factors such as individuals purchasing their own personal protective equipment (either out of choice or to address a lack of provision), inconsistencies between guidelines issued by different agencies and organisations, and the standardised design and procurement of equipment required to protect a diverse healthcare workforce. These, we suggest, have resulted largely because of a lack of appropriate pandemic planning and coordination, as well as insufficient appreciation of the significance of equipment design for the healthcare setting. As with many aspects of the pandemic, personal protective equipment has created and revealed inequalities driven by economics, gender, ethnicity and professional influence, creating a division between the ‘haves’ and ‘have-nots’ of personal protective equipment. As the healthcare workforce continues to cope with ongoing waves of COVID-19, and with the prospect of more pandemics in the future, it is vital that these inequalities are urgently addressed, both through academic analysis and practical action.

Potentiating Gross Motor Coordination in 5-year-old Infants

The practice of gross motor coordination allows the infant to perform experiential actions to reach maturity, evidencing the passage from practical action to the action of thinking. In this way, feelings and sensations are promoted; discovering one's own body, space and time. The objective of the research was to describe the level of gross motor coordination presented by five-year-old children from I.E.I. N° 0345, Lima and I.E.I. N° 166 "Warma Kuyay", Callao, 2020. The research approach was quantitative, basic type and comparative descriptive design. The technique used was observation and the instrument was the checklist validated through the expert judgment technique and the reliability was 0.911, according to Cronbach's alpha. The results obtained describe the differences presented by five-year-old students in relation to gross motor coordination; the main indicators being the prioritization of the body through movement and the orientation to the development of motor activities, especially in the first years of life. This, because it favors the physical, emotional, socio-affective and cognitive levels, which evidences the differences between the samples investigated.

Helfen, weil es glücklich macht?

The author turns to the question of the significance of motivation for action. She explains how, from the perspective of Christian ethics, this basic moral philosophical problem is further exacerbated by a thought of God that is aimed at practical action. Since Christian faith can motivate to social action, but not justify morality, the question of the religious motives of helping and the experiences associated with them becomes virulent in the present context. If Christianity wants to develop a motivating force for solidarity in post-secular societies, Christian ethics cannot avoid critically reflecting on Christian motives in terms of structures that promote asymmetries and dependencies. At the same time, it must extrapolate alternative religious interpretations of helping that can develop plausibility potential in society and become morally effective.

Thinking Urban Transformation through Elsewhere: A Conversation between Real-World Labs in São Paulo and Hamburg on Governance and Practical Action

Urban real-world laboratories (RWLs) are increasingly used internationally and studied as an instrument of urban transformation. New cases in diverse political, economic, social and ecological situations offer a rich set of learning experiences, but the distinctive urban contexts make it impossible to draw comparisons in the traditional sense. In this article—an experiment in itself—we aim to gain a deeper understanding of how RWLs contribute to urban transformation in very different contexts. We apply Jennifer Robinson’s theoretical framework “thinking through elsewhere” on two ongoing urban RWLs: the Itaim Paulista Lab, located in the urban periphery of São Paulo, Brazil and the Lokstedt Urban Transformation Lab in Hamburg, Germany. We operationalize Robinson’s framework in two steps. First, we present the genetics—context, roots, concepts and activities—of both labs. Second, we engage the RWLs in a generative conversation on their role in transforming governance and practical action, with a special focus on the questions of if and how the labs contribute to long-term transformative change. We also find that both labs show potential to contribute to long-term transformative change through governance and practical action.

Socio-environmental analysis of the rural zone of Espírito Santo do Dourado/MG: a perspective for future integration policies

Issues referring to environmental conservation and diagnosis of rural zones are still scarce topics inside public policies and this aspect still requires greater attention. That being, the goal of this research was to present a diagnosis of the rural area of a small city in the South of the Minas Gerais State, with typical agricultural characteristics and large availability of water in order to verify possible socio-environmental inconsistencies. The data was gathered from secondary information of the federal, state, and town public databases, besides face-to-face questionnaires, rapid assessment protocols and high-definition satellite mapping of land use for the last few years. It was possible to assess that conservation actions and Permanent Preservation Areas (APPs) are reduced and that interviewed people present limited knowledge about public policies of family farming stimulation. As per rural basic sanitation, practical action by local governments must be prioritized. The conclusion of this diagnosis is to suggest that further investments should be prioritized to assist social and environmental segments.

Advancing a Five-Level Typology of Homelessness Prevention

This paper aims to demonstrate the efficacy of a five-level homelessness prevention typology, encompassing universal, targeted, crisis, emergency, and recovery categories. We argue that this typology can be deployed to illuminate key comparisons in homelessness prevention policy and practice between different jurisdictions and over time. Meanwhile, it avoids the confusions and overlaps that occur in extant categorisations. Using the UK jurisdictions as an empirical testbed for this analytical framework, four key lessons emerge which we contend have resonance across much of the global north. First, though there is growing evidence of the importance of both universal prevention measures (particularly the delivery of affordable housing and poverty reduction), and targeted preventative interventions (focused on high risk groups and transitions), practical action on both fronts has been deeply deficient to date. Second, and more encouragingly, there is a nascent shift in homelessness practice from an overwhelming focus on basic, emergency interventions, towards more upstream attempts to avert the kind of crisis situations that can lead to homelessness arising in the first place. Third, and also welcome, is a trend within recovery interventions from treatment-led to more housing-led models, albeit that this shift has been frustratingly slow to materialise in many countries. Fourth, across all of these categories of homelessness prevention, there remain substantial evidence gaps, especially outside of the US.

LOCALIZING CONTENT MODERATION: APPROACHING THE ORIENTATIONAL SPACES OF FACEBOOK GROUP ADMINS AND MODS

This paper contributes to the burgeoning literature on content moderation by focusing on its practice in relation to localized social media contexts, an area which remains under-researched. It makes two key contributions. Firstly, it presents the results of a study on moderation practices in relation to place-named Facebook groups across Greater London. Drawing on in-depth interviews with administrators and moderators from 16 Facebook groups, we focus on exploring how such administrators and moderators negotiate an apparent ‘orientational’ tension between ‘translocality’ and ‘locality’. On the one hand, we explore how administrators and moderators oriented partly to what might be understood as the 'translocal' space of Facebook as a platform. On the other hand, we also sought to understand how such administrators and moderators orient to the localised situation surrounding the place-named Facebook group. Our second key contribution aligns with the conference theme on co-dependence and social media, outlining a conceptual approach for researching the geographical contexts or ‘place’ of content moderation more broadly. We emphasize the inherent, practical locality of content moderation. Drawing on a long tradition of relational approaches in human geography, cultural anthropology and philosophy, we conceptualize ‘locality’ as something produced through practical action, rather being pre-given, specific geographical locations. Approaching the place or context of content moderation relationally, rather than via geographical scales such as local or global, might not only provide a more context sensitive approach, but also, underline the limits of large-scale moderation, whether by platforms or governments, or through human or algorithmic interventions.

Top Teachers’ Workshop

On the basis of improving teaching quality and enriching education mind, the rural workshop of Liangbin Yi in Hangzhou returns to the essence of teaching, truly promoting students’ development. This research topic is also the core of the teaching, scientific research, and management of the workshop. With the abundant teaching resources, the workshop conducted various teaching activities and exhibition activities, such as building the learning platform, holding the report sharing, summit forum, on-the-job training, and sending teachers to the countryside, through practical action research. It can also propel the curriculum reform, deepen the classroom teaching research, strengthen the unity of knowledge and action, improve teachers’ teaching theory and practical ability at the same time, and improve the evaluation system, which provided fully play to the guidance and demonstration of famous rural teacher workshop, and positively contributed to the rural teachers’ development.