Improving Self-organization and Self-efficacy of Diverse Occupational Therapy students: The Development of the Embodied and Embedded Motor Skills Curriculum

Abstract

Being organized and confident in our movements and thoughts is necessary to achieve a desired outcome. Motor, process, and social interaction performance skill training is therefore part of contemporary occupational therapy (OT) training. Also prioritized is building awareness of cultural, social and economic diversity, inequity and the need for inclusion and representation within the OT profession. The US OT Practice Framework emphasizes the embeddedness of clients and their activities in personal and sociocultural contexts.

Less attention has been paid to the learning process, self-organization, and self-efficacy of diverse OT students as they prepare for hands-on interventions with future clients. Minimal literature is available about their own somatic awareness and embodied understanding of the motor skills they teach their clients. A decade of observing clinical labs at historically Black Howard University (HU), and a recent survey of HU OT students, reveal their quest for embodied motor learning, and for guidance in organizing kinesthetically for client encounters.

Researching these observed and voiced needs stimulated the development of the Embedded and Embodied Motor Skill Curriculum (EEMSC). The curriculum is grounded in evidence-based OT research and in the Feldenkrais Method® of somatic education.

The Kern 6-Step Approach to curriculum design was used to develop the program. It is envisioned that applying somatic learning in clinical interventions with underserved population will be empowering and enabling for both OTs and their clients and contribute to the process of knowledge translation between practice and research.