Curriculum Update Fall 2024
By Brenda Beagan (faculty peer reviewed).
“Forget your perfect offering, There is a crack, a crack in everything, That's how the light gets in.” ~ Leonard Cohen
Faculty members in the School of Occupational Therapy continue to work on ways to enact commitments to Truth and Reconciliation as we move toward implementing a new curriculum in September 2025. A lot of that work is internal: we strive to unearth and question taken-for-granted ways of doing, thinking, being and belonging that are rooted in Western colonial worldviews.
As noted in the Occupational Therapy Statement of Commitment to Indigenous Peoples in Canada released in September 2023, colonial harms have been embedded in education, research, and practice. Part of committing to change means really listening to Indigenous occupational therapists, students and scholars, when they are generous enough to share their critiques, insights and knowledges. It means truly hearing: with our ears, hearts, minds and spirits. It means being open to critique.
A great example of such critique is a recent paper exploring the strengths and limitations of the COPM for use in Indigenous contexts. Written by two former students from our School, Tara Price and Tara Pride, it is in an open-access journal. Anyone can access it. The authors note important strengths of the COPM, including its semi-structured format, its adaptability, and the fact that it does not use standardized scoring based on Western norms. They also note that any assessment involving scoring may be ill-suited in Indigenous contexts, particularly when it is focused on identifying problems (deficits) rather than strengths. These aspects simply come from a different worldview that may not fit well in Indigenous communities. Similarly, they ask (p. 6) why the COPM focuses on productivity, leisure and self-care, rather than, say, relationships “to others, spirit, self, land, and ancestors”? They suggest adaptations for using the COPM in Indigenous contexts, such as using a strengths-based approach, and attending to balance and harmony.
The COPM is only one measure, yet this critique models ways of asking ourselves challenging questions to try to unearth colonialism within occupational therapy practice and education. It’s hard to step outside the box, to try to see things differently, to ask Why. It’s hard to identify cracks in the foundations of what we know and do. It is also valuable. As Canadian Leonard Cohen famously wrote in his song Anthem, “Forget your perfect offering, There is a crack, a crack in everything, That's how the light gets in.”
Occupational Therapy Statement of Commitment to Indigenous Peoples in Canada released in September 2023 https://caot.ca/document/8227/TRC_CommitmentStatement_EN_June2024.pdf
Price, T., & Pride, T. (2023). The Canadian Occupational Performance Measure (COPM): Critiquing its Applicability With Indigenous Peoples and Communities. The Open Journal of Occupational Therapy, 11(3), 1-10. https://doi.org/10.15453/2168-6408.2085
Cohen, L. (1992). Anthem [Song]. On The Future [Album]. Columbia Records.