Special Issue: Challenging boundaries within occupational science: A pluriverse agenda for our scholarship

Abstract

Scientific dialogue is often confined to professional spaces in peer-reviewed journals and conferences. These spaces allow scholars to interact to exchange ideas and share findings. The enactment of “research” in these spaces is guided by traditions and ways of doing that are practiced by scholars and, in turn, taught to new scholars (Aldrich et al., 2022). In occupational science, there has been an increasingly critical turn in examining the phenomenon of occupation, in all its complexity, as well as the ways in which we approach our work. This includes reflecting on our practices and examining our biases, as they support how we construct and pursue our studies. As Williams (2023) notes, biases allow us to function quickly and efficiently in situations but also can underlie discriminatory behavior: