When designing international educational collaborations, occupational science and occupational therapy educators must consider how occupational justice can be a linchpin for students’ learning. This article describes an international collaboration involving 52 undergraduate occupational science students in the United States and 41 undergraduate occupational therapy students in South Africa. The students participated in six synchronous video conferences in 2016, during which they gave group presentations about four occupational science constructs and engaged in general question-and-answer sessions. Forty percent of the students provided feedback about the interactions using a six-item open-ended electronic questionnaire, which we analyzed using directed content analysis. Our findings suggest that the collaboration helped the students develop more nuanced understandings of disciplinary constructs, international peers, and themselves, providing a platform from which to engage with the big idea of occupational justice. Refinements to this collaboration are aimed at drawing on students’ increased critical consciousness to further develop their knowledge about occupational justice.

Background: Domestic work is a common form of work in South Africa that is known to place the workers

Substance abuse is a rising global problem, associated with medical, psychiatric, family, occupational, legal, political, financial, and spiritual problems. Recovery is an important area of consideration in occupational therapy's quest to promoting health and well-being. This narrative inquiry explored the journey of recovery from substance abuse among young adult Zimbabwean men. Three men were purposively selected to participate in in-depth narrative interviews about their occupations during recovery. Data were analyzed using a narrative analysis. Explanatory stories and three superordinate themes illustrated how substance abuse was associated with both positive and negative outcomes. The recovery process emerged as an ongoing occupational transition, influenced by occupational identity and involving changes in occupational participation. Recovery from substance abuse can be conceptualized as an occupational transition. Ongoing participation in "healthy" and meaningful occupations is key factor in this process. Construction of a positive occupational identity is also central.

This paper has the dual aim of first presenting an understanding of school dropout as an occupational transition and second, to suggest how this occupational transition may be navigated successfully. School dropout is of concern to occupational therapy as it limits peoples' full social inclusion. We draw on data from a biographical inquiry into the nature of occupational engagement of men in a low socioeconomic, South African community who dropped out of school. In this study, narrative data were generated from 3 men, followed by a narrative analysis and thematic analysis. The findings reflected that two of the men established stable occupational trajectories after dropping out of school, contrasted with the third man who was unable to do this. The interpretations suggest that a successful occupational transition for these two participants occurred through establishing anchoring occupations as a result of chance encounters with individuals who acted as 'champions'. These champions ensured the successful negotiation of available opportunities. Through offering these insights, this paper provides an illustration of how concepts interpreted and discussed in occupational science

The availability of and access to fair opportunities has been proposed as significant to promoting occupational justice. This paper presents a scoping review that aimed to explore how the concept 'opportunity' has been understood within occupational science. Following Arksey and O'Malley's (2005) methodological framework, we identified, screened, and selected 12 papers that focused on the theorization of opportunity or concepts and/or frameworks proposed to be related. Our thematic synthesis of these papers revealed three themes: Opportunity conceptualized as synonymous with capabilities, Occupational opportunity conceptualized as an option to participate, and Implicit theorization of opportunity couched within social transformation. Collectively these themes revealed that theorization about opportunity is implicit and largely focused on access to basic resources. Opportunity was also shown to be a concept that holds importance for a socially transformative occupational science agenda because of the relationship it holds with situations of inequality and injustice. Although the third theme teases out some of the relationships that opportunity holds to other concepts relevant for social transformation, this theorization remains limited. We conclude that further scholarship should involve clarifying disciplinary terminology and providing insight into how opportunity could contribute to occupational justice. We end by providing some suggestions for how to take up this challenge.