Overview

Occupation and Rehabilitation Science focuses on the interdisciplinary study of human performance and participation in everyday occupations and contexts across the lifespan. As this focus suggests, Occupation and Rehabilitation Science endeavors both to link and to deepen new understandings of its two central concepts of human performance and everyday occupation. Its concern with human performance encompasses attention to discrete performance capacities and their relationship to functional behavior and task performance. The science’s concern with everyday occupations complements and helps to further define its perspective on human performance. Everyday occupations refer to activities that: (a) people need and want to do on a recurring basis; (b) impart a sense of order, routine, meaning and purpose to daily life; and (c) influence health and well-being across the lifespan both favorably and unfavorably. Everyday occupations encompass a plethora of activities involved in diverse life pursuits and social roles such as student, worker, spouse, parent, friend, advocate, athlete, artist, or recreational enthusiast, among others. Occupation and Rehabilitation Science addresses how participation in everyday occupations influences, and is influenced by, discrete performance capacities like sensory processing or motor control. It also addresses how contexts of everyday occupations—particularly the physical, social and cultural dimensions of homes, schools, places of work, and communities, as well as economic circumstances and social policies—may both constrain and enable healthful occupational participation and development of critical performance capacities in persons with and without disabilities. These much needed areas of scientific inquiry have important societal implications related to helping people gain access to positive occupational opportunities, surmount daily living challenges, and perform and participate in occupations that promote health and well-being at individual, group, and population levels.

In offering a PhD in Occupation and Rehabilitation Science, the Department of Occupational Therapy intends to integrate occupational science and rehabilitation science: two highly synergistic academic areas. Occupation and Rehabilitation Science draws upon rehabilitation science’s contributions that shed light on human performance, especially as related to function and disability. It also draws upon occupational science’s sharp focus on everyday occupations and outcomes associated with occupational participation among people of all ages and abilities.

In regards to rehabilitation science, the program builds upon the study of human performance as related to processes and factors that influence how disability develops, and strategies for improving functional capacities in people with disabilities. Historically influenced by understandings of disability promoted by the World Health Organization (WHO), rehabilitation science has traditionally focused on understanding relationships between disability (or activity restrictions) and underlying medical pathologies or impairments of bodily structures and functions. Prior to the turn of the 21st century, however, the WHO began to place much greater emphasis on the role of environmental and societal factors in the disablement process and people’s participation in important life activities. Consistent with conceptualizations of disability conveyed in the WHO’s current International Classification of Functioning, Disability and Health (ICF), rehabilitation science has broadened its orientation to function and disability to encompass diverse contextual factors.

As related to occupational science, the program builds upon the study of the essential elements of everyday occupations, how occupational processes unfold through time, the relationship of occupational participation to social policies and structures, and how occupational participation, or its lack, influence development, health, and quality of life among other important outcomes. Occupational science emerged from occupational therapy and like, rehabilitation science, embraces a lifespan perspective. However, occupational science extends beyond a concern with function and disability to considerations of processes and factors that influence occupational participation among people of all ages and abilities including, for example, poverty, the global economy, or social upheaval caused by war or violence. Occupational science is consequently committed to the ethic of occupational justice, which calls upon societies and communities to be enabling and empowering and to equitably provide resources that help meet the occupational needs of diverse individuals and populations.