A transactional perspective on occupation: a critical reflection

Abstract

Background: The emergence of a transactional perspective on occupation, informed primarily by John Dewey’s work, has gained increasing popularity in occupational science and occupational therapy.

Aim: The aim of this paper is to offer a critical reflection on a transactional perspective on occupation and to advance the dialogue on a transactional perspective on occupation.

Methods: A framework for critical reflection of theory was applied to a transactional perspective on occupation, exploring five domains of theory usefulness: clarity, simplicity, generality, accessibility, and importance.

Findings: A transactional perspective on occupation presents with clear strengths including its ability to capture complex relationships, its generality, and its importance to occupational research. However, there is a need to address issues in clarity and accessibility by establishing consistent definitions of constructs, further developing the construct of occupation within the perspective, and applying methods well suited to understand its relational perspective.

Conclusions: A transactional perspective on occupation has more recently emerged as a promising perspective through which to understand occupation. It holds promise in understanding cultural conceptualizations of occupation and the relationship between occupations and the natural environment. Future work should address possible dissonance between its pragmatic underpinnings and harmful occupations, and develop contextual elements beyond the social.

Keywords:

• Critique
• occupation
• theory
• transaction

Acknowledgements

The author would like to thank Dr Susan Forwell and Dr Lyn Jongbloed for their review of an earlier version of this paper.

Disclosure statement

The author reports that they have no conflicts of interest. The author alone is responsible for the content and writing of the paper.