Professional education, research and learning in the territory: notes on the experience of occupational therapists training

DOI: 10.15343/0104-7809.20102140147

Abstract

We approach here occupational therapy experiences as strategies to understand social reality, to offer academic training and to develop
research and reflections to promote care technologies in the social field, with a focus on strengthening social support networks of population groups
in situation of social vulnerability and/or disaffiliation. That is harmonized with the proposal of training standards of World Federation of Occupational
Therapists, mainly regarding the necessary engagement with the entire society, making visible the possibilities of contribution from the area to the
social welfare of people in their communities. The goal is to discuss the training of undergraduate and graduate students as well as interventions that
emphasize the technical-ethical-political role of professionals before contemporary social problems. For doing this, one works mainly from programs for
helping Brazilian children and youngsters, in their interfaces with social questions. We observed that occupational therapy has effective contributions as
a nucleus of professional specificity for intervention in the territorial dimension, for the development of conviviality, overcoming an approach centered
in the clinical/individual dimension, respecting subjects’ singularity, from the principles concerning the search of the radical exercise of democracy and
rights coming from citizenship.