Decolonising occupational science education through learning activities based on a study from the Global South

ABSTRACT

If occupational science education is to become more globally relevant, it must highlight more voices and practices from diverse communities. Learning about occupational justice from the perspectives of Global South communities addresses cognitive injustice and the need to decolonise occupational science education. This paper offers some critical reflections concerning the author’s pedagogic approach, and the ways his research about olive growing in Palestine (Simaan, 2018) informed students’ learning about occupational justice. It focuses on the processes in which students and lecturers engaged within a decolonising approach to occupational science education. A learning activity based on pedagogical processes of ‘conscientization’ (Freire, 1996), critical reflexivity (Whiteford & Townsend, 2011) and intercultural translation (Santos, 2014) is discussed, and lessons learnt by lecturer and students about themselves, their communities, and occupational science are reflected upon. Selected students’ reflections, which illustrate how they positioned themselves in relation to the community studied, and how they interrogated their own reactions to learning about daily lives in Palestine, are discussed. These processes demonstrate the benefits of highlighting local knowledge on occupational justice produced by Global South groups, and how this knowledge might begin to address cognitive injustice and the need to decolonise occupational science pedagogy. More empirical and theoretical work is needed in occupational science education regarding intercultural translations concerning occupational justice, and means of doing and knowing from diverse Global South perspectives.

Si la educación en ciencias ocupacionales ha de ser más relevante a nivel mundial, deben destacarse más voces y más prácticas de comunidades diversas. Desde las perspectivas de las comunidades del Sur Global, el aprendizaje de la justicia ocupacional aborda la injusticia cognitiva y la necesidad de descolonizar la educación en ciencias ocupacionales. El presente documento expone algunas reflexiones críticas sobre el enfoque pedagógico del autor y la forma en que su investigación sobre el cultivo del olivo en Palestina (Simaan, 2018) incidió en el aprendizaje de los estudiantes sobre justicia laboral. El artículo se centra en los intercambios realizados entre estudiantes y profesores utilizando un enfoque descolonizador de la educación en ciencias ocupacionales. Así, analiza una actividad de aprendizaje basada en procesos pedagógicos de “concientización” (Freire, 1996), reflexividad crítica (Whiteford y Townsend, 2011) y traducción intercultural (Santos, 2014) y discurre sobre los aprendizajes obtenidos por profesores y estudiantes sobre ellos mismos, sus comunidades y la ciencia ocupacional. Asimismo, el artículo analiza las reflexiones de algunos estudiantes, en tanto ilustran cómo se posicionaron en relación con la comunidad estudiada y la forma en que cuestionaron sus propias reacciones al aprender sobre la vida cotidiana en Palestina. Estos procesos demuestran los beneficios que conlleva poner de relieve los conocimientos locales sobre justicia laboral producidos por grupos del Sur Global, y el modo en que estos conocimientos podrían comenzar a abordar la injusticia cognitiva y la necesidad de descolonizar la pedagogía de la ciencia ocupacional. Es necesario realizar más trabajo empírico y teórico en la enseñanza de las ciencias ocupacionales relacionado con las traducciones interculturales relativas a la justicia ocupacional, y los medios de hacer y conocer desde diversas perspectivas del Sur Global.

如果要使生活活动学教育具有全球相关性，就必须突显来自不同社会的更多声音和实践。从“全球南方”社区的角度了解生活活动正义，可以解决认知上的不公正以及生活活动学教育去殖民化的需求。本文对作者的教学方法以及他对巴勒斯坦橄榄种植的研究（Simaan，2018）如何帮助学生学习生活活动正义提供了一些批判性的思考。它着重于学生和讲师采用去殖民化方法进行生活活动学教育的过程。讨论了一种基于“自觉化”（Freire，1996）、批判反思性（Whiteford＆Townsend，2011）和跨文化翻译（Santos，2014）的教学过程的学习活动，并由讲师和学生就关于自己、所在社区和生活活动学所学到的东西进行反省。讨论了特定学生的反思，这些反思说明了他们如何与所研究的社区相关，以及他们如何审视自己对巴勒斯坦日常生活的反应。这些过程证明了，突出强调“全球南方”组织产生的关于生活活动正义的本地知识是有好处的，以及这种知识如何开始解决认知上的不公正以及对生活活动学教学去殖民化的需求。在生活活动学教育中，需要进行更多的经验和理论方面的工作，涉及有关生活活动正义的跨文化交流，以及从“全球南方”不同角度行事和了解的方式。

Keywords:

• Occupational science
• Conscientization
• Occupational justice
• Cognitive injustice
• Intercultural translation
• Decolonising the curriculum

This paper describes my personal reflections of how a study of a Global South community (Simaan, 2017, 2018) informed transformative occupational science education, which led to enhanced critical consciousness in researcher-teacher and learners. It describes a process of critical reflexivity by myself as researcher and lecturer, and by students in higher education. This reflexivity involved ‘intercultural translations’ (Santos, 2014), which compare concepts and practices in the Global North and the Global South, and in doing so can enhance the inclusivity and global relevance of fields of study, education, and activism. Such comparisons occur between similar or contrasting concepts, and between concepts produced in analogous or dissimilar cultural contexts. Practices and concepts are selected for intercultural translations by the communities involved, to facilitate an exchange of ideas and practices. For the purpose of this paper, intercultural translations were conducted by comparing and contrasting the practical wisdom of olive farmers in Palestine (Simaan, 2017, 2018) and practices and concepts used in occupational science that were learnt by undergraduate students in a British university.

I will describe a pedagogical activity that contributes to “ecologies of knowledges”, which refers to the inclusion of lifeways and practical wisdom from all corners of the world (Santos, 2014, p. 188). Such a collection of ways of thinking allows other-than-Western ways of knowing to produce ideas that contribute to social, occupational, and cognitive justice (Santos, 2014). This procedure is needed due to ‘cognitive injustice’ in the education of Western-centric disciplines including occupational science. Cognitive injustice refers to the exclusion of other-than-Western types of knowledge, which are often developed and used by groups struggling against systems of oppression such as patriarchy, colonialism, and capitalism, all of which are remnants of Western colonialism (Santos, 2014). Cognitive injustice is not a phenomenon that Western scholars and educationalists intentionally created; it exists due to the long-lasting effects of coloniality in society and academia in general. Santos (2014) used the term Global South to refer to communities that have been marginalised because of such structures of oppression. Global North and South, for Santos (2014), were metaphors rather than indicating specific geographical locations. For example, Global South may refer to indigenous groups whose lands have been colonised, to black and ethnic minority groups, to migrants, to people seeking refuge, to low income communities, to women of colour, and to LGBTQ groups. All these groups can be found in Western or non-Western countries.

Santos (2014) advocated for the ‘Epistemologies of the South’ as “movements or grammars of resistance” (p. 21) that emerged against structural oppression and marginalisation worldwide. These resistive philosophies and practices are distinct and differ from Western theories and practices dominant in academia. The Epistemologies of the South can be comparable to, and implemented in, Western academia to enhance its inclusivity (Santos, 2014). Santos based his observations on the work of the World Social Forum (WSF) that enabled a meeting between global movements such as peasants, indigenous communities, as well as workers. The participants generated and exchanged ideas that aimed to resist neoliberal globalised capitalism, imperialism and patriarchy, and other forms of oppressions. These idea and practices were more than practical solutions to social injustice; they were thought of as a particular form of knowledge.

The next section of the discussion offers background information about decolonising occupational science knowledge and education. A liberatory pedagogic approach based on Freire’s concept of ‘conscientization’ follows; then a brief outline of the olive growing study in Palestine that includes some reflections on a journey of decolonising the researcher-lecturer’s mind. Next is a learning activity based on the study about olive farming as a daily activity in Palestine, as an example of exploring knowledge about occupational justice created in the Global South. Some pedagogical lessons learnt from olive farmers are explored and processes of transformation in students’ consciousness described. These reflections demonstrate how lecturer and students positioned themselves in relation to the community studied and the concepts it created, and how they reflected on themselves as collective occupational beings embedded in their own communities, including the natural environment. The paper ends with some conclusions and future considerations for occupational science education.

Decolonising Occupational Science Curricula

Addressing the issue of cognitive injustice will contribute to healing some of the effects of coloniality in occupation-focused education, eventually leading to decolonising occupational science pedagogy. Coloniality refers to the enduring effects of Western colonisation of non-Western lands and resources; these effects included cognitive injustice in Western-centric disciplines and higher education (Alonso Bejarano et al., 2019; Santos, 2014). Occupational science curricula have been colonised by biomedical, individualised, and ethnocentric approaches, which have so far been taken for granted (Gerlach et al., 2018; Simaan, 2018). For example, most of the occupational science literature reports on research and theory production from the Global North (i.e., English-speaking white scholars); research and education centre on the idea of independence for the individual person; and scholars value the study of certain daily occupations such as those that produce income over those that do not (Kantartzis, 2017; Kantartzis & Molineux, 2012).

The decolonisation of a curriculum can be progressed by focusing on and drawing from “the work of non-Western, colonized writers and intellectuals … [and] reach[ing] beyond the academy to valorise the knowledges of the colonized – ways of thinking that colonizers tried to supress or destroy” (Alonso Bejarano et al., 2019, p. 21). In occupation-focused pedagogy, this might mean prioritising research, theory production, and concepts that originate from Global South communities (Hammell, 2019; Ramugondo, 2018). But this comes with a warning: decolonisation is not a metaphor or a tokenistic step (Tuck & Yang, 2012). Instead, the decolonisation of the curriculum should be combined with actions to change lecturers’, students’, and communities’ consciousness and circumstances. For example, educationalists can work with learners on projects and actions that aim to redistribute resources: water, land, income, education, health, and well-being resources, and equitable access to meaningful daily occupations. Some promising examples from occupation-based education and practice in South Africa demonstrate some attempts to address such structural factors (Galvaan & Peters, 2017; Richards & Galvaan, 2018).

Despite some encouraging developments in occupational science that explore social justice issues related to daily occupations, or what has been termed ‘occupational justice’ (Wilcock & Townsend, 2000), the discipline is far from being fully decolonised. This process of decolonisation necessitates consideration of cognitive injustice in addition to social and occupational injustice.

The scope of literature addressing issues about learning and knowing occupation in occupational science is growing (Townsend & Hocking, 2020). The study of occupational justice focuses on the centrality of societal and political factors, which influence and are influenced by people’s daily occupations (Wilcock & Townsend, 2000, 2009). Wilcock and Townsend (2009) defined occupational justice as “the right of every individual to be able to meet basic needs and to have equal opportunities and life chances to reach toward her or his potential but specific to the individual’s engagement in diverse and meaningful occupation” (p. 193). The individual in this definition of occupational justice is still at the centre. This focus on the person does not necessarily speak to all global communities’ daily experiences. In particular, this definition may misrepresent Global South groups who do things together and for each other’s well-being (Ramugondo & Kronenberg, 2015).

Scholars are developing curricula based on occupational science’s foundations and contemporary theoretical and empirical research (Payne & Crowley, 2020; Taff et al., 2018). However, literature regarding decolonising occupation-centred education, or addressing the lack of consideration of Global South epistemologies in higher education, is scant. Some published material from the USA, Europe, and South Africa deals with learning about occupational justice in diverse contexts, by forming collaborations between higher education institutes from different parts of the world. Such projects were found to increase students’ critical consciousness of people’s diverse occupational needs, and students’ understanding of the concept of occupational justice (Aldrich & Peters, 2019; Fox et al., 2017; Erasmus+ & Strategic Partnership for Higher Education, 2019). Some collaborations included partnerships with community projects to allow students to learn about occupational injustice experienced by excluded groups living in Europe (Erasmus+ & Strategic Partnership for Higher Education, 2019). Aldrich and Peters (2019) cited some works by Global South scholars, but none of these partnerships encompass learning about the means generated by marginalised groups for making sense of, and combatting, occupational injustices that are needed for decolonising occupation-centred education.

In addition, educators in the USA developed curricula suitable for a culturally diverse group of students and embedded some analysis of occupational science concepts (e.g., Collective occupation) produced in the Global South (Frank, 2017; Mahoney & Kiraly-Alvarez, 2019). However, the learning activities were based on theoretical understanding and analysis using documentary films, with no mention of empirical research from the Global South that has produced concepts generated by the studied communities. Furthermore, these concepts were not interculturally translated and linked to the context and language of occupational science education in the West. Inspired by discussions of coloniality’s effects in occupation-centred disciplines (Hammell, 2019; Ramugondo, 2018), other educators used the term ‘decoloniality’ to describe their approach to education, concluding that Western educationalists are responsible for ameliorating this historic process of excluding Global South knowledge construction in occupational-centred education (Mahoney & Kiraly-Alvarez, 2019). Thus, there is an emerging discussion about the need to liberate education from cognitive injustice (although the authors did not use the term) through learning about occupational injustice experienced by Global South groups, and how they deal with it practically and theoretically.

I am not aware of current attempts to address these issues in occupation-centred curricula in the UK. Therefore, I felt it would be helpful to start a conversation about cognitive injustice in occupation-centred education, and to share some personal reflections on how occupation-centred curricula might be decolonised and what might be the processes of a decolonised occupational science education. My role as researcher-educator and my liminal positionality, due to living and working between Global South (Palestine) and Global North (UK) communities, would, it was hoped, enable a bridging between those binaries: research and education; and the Global North and South.

A Liberatory Pedagogic Approach

In liberating theory production and education in occupational science from its ethnocentric history, the communal, international, and historical forces need to be understood and acted on. Scholars from South America and South Africa urged the discipline to interrogate the historical forces that created the institutions of the study of occupation (Guajardo et al., 2015). This interrogation should involve rethinking the basis of the study of occupation on political, ethical, and epistemological levels (Guajardo et al., 2015; Magalhães et al., 2018; Ramugondo, 2015).

In my role as a university lecturer, I consider the raising of the social and political awareness of learners a key aim. This approach is inspired by Paulo Freire’s (1996) concept of ‘conscientization’. The Portuguese word conscientização (from which the English word conscientization is derived) means critical consciousness that leads to linking theory with practice. It refers to a process of learning to understand social, political, and economic factors and act against oppression (Freire, 1996). This includes reflecting on local, global, and historical forces that students of occupational science, who are learners and agents of change, need to address in their education.

This liberatory approach was also inspired by ideas from feminist women of colour, in particular bell hooks’ (2018) educational style of ‘engaged pedagogy’. For both Freire (1996) and hooks (2018), education is a ‘praxis’ that combines critical reflexivity with actions to change unjust individual and collective circumstances. Influenced by Freire’s work, hooks (2018) believed that education can be a ‘practice of freedom’ that liberates teachers and learners. She saw each student as “an active participant, not a passive consumer” (p. 14), who is involved in the creation of knowledge and the facilitation of more just circumstances for all. hooks (2018) agreed with Freire’s assertion that “education can only be liberatory when everyone claims knowledge as a field in which we all labor” (p. 14).

I work with students to help them reflect on, and work with, individuals and communities who use health and social care services. Students also learn about non-governmental and activist groups working with marginalised populations, for example people who are disabled, unemployed, homeless, and those seeking asylum and refuge. These are communities that often have restricted access to purposeful and meaningful daily occupations, such as education, recreation, gardening, or cooking. My educational praxis is guided by the principle that human societies, including teachers and students, need to work towards social, occupational, and cognitive justice. To learn about social-occupational-cognitive justice, students reflect on people’s daily lives that might be enabled or restricted by unjust forces. Examples of such forces include dominant attitudes such as stereotypes, racism, or oppressive government policies. Within this approach, learners consider how knowledge, theory, and models of practice might be inappropriate for communities they work with, or even contribute to their oppression. This includes some ideas and practices in occupational science, such as notions about individualism and practices that promote independence, which ignore the communal and interdependent nature of Global South communities’ daily lives.

Researching Occupational Justice in the Global South

The focus of this paper is on a learning activity based on my empirical research with olive growers in Palestine. My research adopts a decolonial methodology (Alonso Bejarano et al., 2019), and explores the concept of occupational justice. This research aims to highlight Global South daily lives and their unique means of producing practical wisdom to enable them to resist occupational injustice. A key rationale for the research was that such means rooted in Global South experiences are needed to enrich occupational science constructs. This type of research would have implications for learning and teaching the construct of occupational justice in particular, as social and occupational justice cannot be fully achieved without cognitive justice (Santos, 2014).

I went back to my home country of Palestine to explore a daily occupation (olive growing) and a community (olive-farming families). This occupation and the community are at the core of society there, and have been since the Bronze Age (Simaan, 2018). They have been under attack in the last 100 or so years, since the intensification of Western colonisation in the area (Khalidi, 2020; Simaan, 2018). They however survive and in some places flourish. I wanted to ask the questions: what, how, and why do olive growers do what they do, and what can occupational science scholars, educators and students learn from this situation (Simaan, 2018)?

Olive growers in Palestine were observed to experience ‘occupational apartheid’ (Kronenberg & Pollard, 2005), which is a form of occupational injustice based on restrictions on their daily lives imposed because of who they were (their belonging to Palestinian communities). For example: due to the enforcement of zoning of areas in the West Bank of Palestine and the imposition of hundreds of checkpoints, settlements, and the separation wall – the latter two amounting to war crimes (International Court of Justice, 2004; International Committee of the Red Cross, 1949) – Palestinian olive farmers can access their land only with permits and only at limited times, their land may be confiscated, and their trees may be uprooted or damaged. I documented examples of all these restrictions in a doctoral thesis (Simaan, 2018). Rather than passively accepting this situation, and despite all odds, olive farmers have continued this ancient, highly meaningful, and communal occupation. This resilience was enabled by a practical wisdom and a vocabulary of daily forms of resistance, which were articulated in Arabic by olive farmers as Sutra-‘Awna-Sumud (defined below). Kronenberg (2018) used Aristotle’s concept of ‘phronesis’ to describe similar phenomena, and he explored the idea and practice of ubuntu in South Africa. Ubuntu is “an African philosophy of critical humanism” (Kronenberg, 2018, p. 39) based on a communal way of doing everyday life that native communities adopt to resist injustice and maintain their daily occupations.

The experience of working with olive farmers helped me to decolonise my own mind by learning about my fallahi (peasant) roots and about the history and daily lives of my own community (other Palestinians) from whom I have been separated. Schools in Israel, where I grew up, were banned from teaching Palestinian children about our own heritage and history. During the exploration of Sutra-‘Awna-Sumud as a consciousness and a way of life practised by my own community, I studied my homeland’s history and society. This research led me to visit communities I would not otherwise have come to know, because Palestinians are segregated from each other by the separation wall, by checkpoints, and a complex web of precarious citizenship and residency rights. By reconnecting with my land’s unique tradition and those who have steadfastly preserved and evolved that tradition, I have developed a new relationship with land and heritage in Palestine, in the UK and, in fact, everywhere I go – a sense of belonging that transcends human-made boundaries.

An Educational Activity

I designed and delivered the learning activity described here. Its purpose was to discuss the concepts of occupational justice, collective occupations (Ramugondo & Kronenberg, 2015), and Wilcock’s (2006) terms of doing-being-becoming-belonging. It aimed to explore such concepts by presenting the author’s study in the class in the form of a presentation and discussion. The activity also included watching a film, picking and pickling olives, and writing a reflection about the day, which will be described below. Thirty-five occupational therapy students in their 3^rd year of studies participated in this activity. In the class, students heard from me, as researcher-lecturer, that olive growers challenge the occupational apartheid they experience by employing three interrelated means. Sutra is driven by the need to survive and be dignified. Sutra leads to people maintaining their identities and roles through engagement in meaningful occupations. ‘Awna means to belong to land, trees, and community, as well as referring to solidarity and collaboration with family, village, nation, and the global community. Sumud is a notion that invokes tenacity and hope; it means to hold on to land and community, to resist, and to aspire for a better – more just – shared future. Students heard that the wisdom founded on these three notions leads to creative actions to counteract the occupational injustices experienced by olive growers, such as the use of caves to store equipment and stay the night when access to groves is restricted or construction of storage buildings is banned; or the replanting of trees with the help of people from local and international communities after groves have been uprooted (Simaan, 2018).

To help students to make sense of these findings, and to link them to knowledge already present in occupational science, Sutra-‘Awna-Sumud were compared with Wilcock’s terms of ‘doing-being-becoming-belonging’ (Wilcock, 2006; Wilcock & Hocking, 2015). This form of analysis was used to test the applicability of ‘doing-being-becoming-belonging’ in the Palestinian context and to test how particular notions of doing everyday life connected to a specific place and community might further develop those ideas. For example, Sutra offered ideas about doing and being that aligned with doing for survival and being for identity, as Wilcock suggested in her work. However, Sutra also offered notions about how doing links to a communal and holistic view of well-being, and referred to doing that provided dignity to the community. ‘Awna corresponded with belonging but offered a particular connection to land, natural surroundings, and history, which was not highlighted in Wilcock’s (2006) work. Sumud was found to be linked to the intersection between belonging and becoming, and highlighted notions of solidarity and resistance that have not been explored in Wilcock’s work.

During this activity students watched a film called ‘The Uprooted’ (Joint Advocacy Initiative, 2012), which told olive growers’ stories. One participant in the film described the uprooting of his olive trees and the restrictions on access to his land. Following the class, students harvested olives from a grove on campus, and later pickled them using a Palestinian recipe. They were asked to write a reflective piece inspired by the learning activity that they could, if they wished to, share with peers and lecturer. In this reflection, they were invited to discuss their feelings about what they learnt from the study and activity, and about their own experience as collective occupational beings in their own communities.

Below are extracts from students’ written reflections on this activity. Consent was given by students for their reflections to be shared (there was no need to apply for an ethics committee’s approval as this consent was not part of an empirical study). In the first reflection here, the student was able to relate the story of olive farming in Palestine to her own past activism and to other Global South communities whose land and daily occupations had been colonised by Europeans:

I listened to the man describing being asked for his papers after the destruction had begun and likening it to asking a dead man for ID. We used to slow down this process of environmental destruction using legal means such as the protection of rare species and planning permissions. We could lock ourselves into the trees and it would take a whole day to release us humanely. I do not think the Palestinians would be given the same treatment. I realise how different the opportunities between us are. For the Palestinian farmers, maintaining their daily occupations within the systematic land grab must require a steadfastness I can barely imagine. It brings to mind what has happened to indigenous people in the Americas and Australia who have turned to alcohol and destructive occupations to try and overcome the pain of separation from that which sustains them and gives life meaning, that is the earth. Many of the protesters in England set up tree nurseries and planting projects or community co-operatives after the protests which succeeded in halting the larger road building projects for about 10 years.

Another student also reflected on their own past activism.

We watched the video, [the] Uprooted. It is painful to see the source of life-generation being destroyed, to see the land become arid as a result of this brutal and manipulative deforestation. It evoked for me memories of living in the trees in the forest in Berkshire in England when we were protecting them against road building in 1992. Bulldozers rumbling towards us in the mornings with slow clanking progress surrounded by hundreds of uniformed security [officials]. The inevitable destruction that would follow, trees a hundred years old or more torn out of the ground with a screech. We used to imagine we could hear them howling, or maybe it was us.

Students demonstrated how this pedagogical activity led them to reflect on their own embodied experience as collective occupational beings.

Picking the olive trees on the university campus on a November day was a welcome break from books and computers. How little I get to connect with the natural environment during study times. We talked and shared anecdotes, recalled current and past memories of picking fruits or other crops and what meaning it has. It must be so different with military outposts overlooking the groves and having to move through the sadness of destroyed trees and failing harvests but there is a smell and an energy to the fruit and a connectedness between the people and with the ground that can give hope and add strength to the struggle.

I selected these reflections to present here because they illustrate how students positioned themselves in relation to the community studied, and they are representative of the written reflections that students chose to share with me. In these extracts, students thought about their own situation in the present and in the past. They were able to connect to their own feelings and reactions to observing and learning about daily lives in Palestine. They also reflected on themselves as collective occupational beings who were embedded in their own communities and natural environment.

Pedagogical Lessons Learnt from Olive Farmers

Students benefited from hearing about, and reflecting on, the daily lives of olive farmers and the practical wisdom they produced to tackle occupational injustice. Key learning for students included links they made in the classroom to contemporary concepts and practices in occupational science such as collective occupations, belonging, solidarity, and resistance. Learning about olive farming led to the raising of students’ awareness of historical processes and global layers of contexts, and to the lack of focus on those processes in the majority of models of thinking and practising in occupational science. Students recognised the need for embedding a process of intercultural translation in the classroom between ways of knowing described by occupational scientists and those of marginalised communities. This heightened consciousness was evident in students’ written works and in their classroom discussions.

According to hooks (2018), liberatory education that encourages conscientization “connects the will to know with the will to become” (pp. 18-19). This type of pedagogy addresses the links between what students learn and their life experience. This liberating process is a two-way relationship of empowerment; teachers are also meant to grow and be empowered by such a process (hooks, 2018). This expansion of insight and knowledge occurred to me as an engaged researcher and lecturer as described above, while students made links to their own activism and how they learnt about themselves because of fresh insights they gained from olive farmers. In this way, they have learnt about occupational, social, and cognitive justices. This learning in turn raised their awareness and provided them with an expansion of insight. This new consciousness will hopefully contribute to their learning about and working with other communities who experience comparable circumstances. Moreover, students were able to link abstract constructs (e.g., doing-being-becoming-belonging and occupational apartheid) to their own personal and professional experiences, as well as to others’ occupational experiences, thus achieving conscientization’s goal, which is to connect theory to practice.

Linking my research findings in the classroom to doing-being-becoming-belonging revealed the utility of Wilcock’s constructs in a Palestinian context while, in turn, the Palestinian terms demonstrated how a Global South perspective could develop such concepts, and their imparting, further (Simaan, 2017). For example, discussions in the classroom relayed students’ enhanced understanding of the terms doing-being-becoming-belonging as a result of learning about olive growers’ stories and how they responded to occupational apartheid, including the concepts farming communities constructed and applied. Students commented on how learning about ‘Awna refined their understanding of collaborative and collective occupations founded on solidarity and belonging to community and land. This added depth to their comprehension of the concept of belonging in Wilcock’s (2006) work and how it might apply to their own situation and to those who they support on their placements. For example, students reflected on how this specific notion of belonging can be useful in understanding refugees’ experience of displacement from their own countries, and how facilitating a sense of community in their host countries can be a helpful strategy.

Furthermore, comments in the classroom and from students’ feedback about Sumud illustrated their understanding of how belonging can combine with becoming on a practical level. Students understood that belonging and becoming are interconnected when communities do things together to resist occupational injustice, and to influence each other’s well-being and future. Students were beginning to see links between these experiences and the communities they live in, and work with. For example, some students observed similarities with the collective occupation of activism they had taken part in. Others saw links between the Palestinian term of Sumud and the collective occupations of people seeking refuge who are actively resisting their destitution by seeking their safety, integrating in their host countries, and bettering their future. Connections were also made between the Palestinian notion of Sumud and the collective means disability activists employ to resist systematic discrimination and oppressive policies by, for example, educating the public and campaigning for policy change.

In this way, including the study in the curriculum might have contributed to the ecologies of knowledges in occupational science and its education, specifically by embedding empirical means people employ to respond to occupational injustice. Ecologies of knowledges aim to break the binaries between global and local, and the academic and non-academic (Dutta, 2016). Olive growers’ practical wisdom was shown to achieve this: it was found to be specific to a place and community, yet applicable to other settings and groups, for example migrant groups in Europe or indigenous communities in South Africa (Simaan, 2017). These Palestinian notions about doing and the means to resist daily injustices broke the boundaries between what is considered academic knowledge production and the knowledge and skills produced by communities struggling against social-occupational-cognitive injustice.

Reflecting on this educational activity deepened my belief in the need to embed intercultural translations in pedagogy to ameliorate, and make clearer links between, social, occupational, and cognitive injustices. I became aware of the need to utilise pedagogical processes of conscientization, critical reflexivity, and intercultural translation. Such educational approaches should be based on highlighting Global South epistemological and practical perspectives on occupational justice to facilitate the decolonisation of occupational science education.

International collaborations in occupation-centred education enhance learning about diverse perspectives on occupational justice (Aldrich & Peters, 2019; Fox et al., 2017; Erasmus+ & Strategic Partnership for Higher Education, 2019). Embedding abstract Global South terms and using online and film resources facilitated the education of occupation-centred concepts as shown by Frank (2017) and Mahoney and Kiraly-Alvarez (2019). As Mahoney and Kiraly-Alvarez (2019) reflected, however, decoloniality requires greater utilisation of Global South constructs by Western educationalists due to their historical and collective duty. A recent paper celebrating Ann Wilcock’s work called for more decolonial work highlighting Global South perspectives of occupational justice in occupational science (Hocking & Townsend, 2020). To illustrate how works regarding occupational justice can develop, this paper cited examples of studies connecting between occupational and social justice (Trentham & Neysmith, 2018), including my own olive growing study.

I hope that my reflections have reaffirmed the call by Hocking and Townsend (2020), demonstrated the need to further link research in the Global South to education, and highlighted the importance of conducting more empirical intercultural translations. Sharing my students’ and my own pedagogical experiences is intended to promote reflection and theoretical and empirical work in occupational science education anchored in a decolonial approach and the ‘Epistemologies of the South’.

As a consequence of the educational activity shared in this paper and the learning achieved from it, a module about collective occupations and occupational justice was designed and delivered by the author at a British university. Students were asked to learn about, reflect upon, and contribute to community projects that aim to transform people’s daily lives. Critical reflexivity and intercultural translations are utilised throughout, and alternative methods of learning are employed. For example, panel discussions with community members and activists are conducted and students are asked to record podcasts to report on their learning from these discussions and their visits to the community projects. Furthermore, literature and learning resources were chosen to originate mainly from marginalised and Global South communities. Future empirical evaluation of such an educational approach will help in understanding how occupational science can further cognitive justice and the decolonisation of curricula.

Conclusions and Future Considerations

Decolonial approaches to occupational science education must highlight the experiences and voices of Global South groups, positioning them as agents of knowledge production (Dutta, 2016) and generators of means to combat occupational injustice. This liberatory approach should be adopted to make occupational science and its pedagogy relevant to “the contemporary moment we live in” (Dutta, 2016, p. 329), in which binaries between the local and the global have been blurred due to the globalised and interconnected nature of trade, migration and climatic changes.

To facilitate such an approach to learning, occupational science pedagogy should facilitate processes of critical reflexivity that lead students to position themselves in relation to marginalised communities’ daily lives, and to the knowledge that is being produced by such communities. This epistemic reflexivity (Whiteford & Townsend, 2011) can be achieved by applying intercultural translations between knowledge produced in occupational science in the Global South and North. These characteristics and processes in occupational science pedagogy can begin to combat cognitive injustice and contribute to pluralistic ecologies of knowledges and to the needed decolonisation of the curriculum. Such decolonised education breaks the boundaries between academic and non-academic communities to recognise a plurality of means of knowing and doing, and should avoid the urge to stress hierarchies of forms of knowing and doing (Dutta, 2016).

Occupational science pedagogy will benefit from more studies emerging from the Global South. To further decolonise occupational science curricula, research-based learning should facilitate intercultural translations between different Global South perspectives on occupational justice. For example, occupational justice studied in other-than-Western settings, such as in Latin America, South Africa, and Palestine should be compared. These intercultural translations should refine the understanding of the construct of occupational justice and make their insights more inclusive of the diverse spectrum of daily lives and epistemologies within the Global South.

Furthermore, occupational science scholars and students might benefit from studying differences and similarities within the same geographical areas but among different occupational groupings of people. For example, olive growers’ daily life and forms of resistance can be studied in relation to other occupational communities in Palestine such as shepherds, where other factors such as their semi-nomadic lifestyle and the needs of their livestock might be factors in generating distinct and unique epistemologies and practices. This will be a future research project in which the author of this paper aims to compare how these two Global South groups, sharing the same geographical location, seek occupational justice. This type of study may offer additional insights for the study of occupation everywhere.

This paper was based on my personal reflections, informed by some selected students’ voices. An empirical study evaluating such an activity, and consequent curriculum design, will be useful in generating systematic knowledge about the means to address the issues of cognitive injustice and the decolonisation of occupation-centred education.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).