Enacting Occupation-Based Transformative Research through Participatory Filmmaking with Children with Disabilities
Abstract
Occupational science is striving to become a transformative and international science that seeks to address occupational injustices locally and globally. Moving forward in these directions involves expanding beyond Western perspectives on occupation and utilizing critically-informed participatory methodologies. The intent of this dissertation was to enact an occupation-based transformative agenda through a critically-informed participatory action research (PAR) project with children with disabilities from rural South India.
This dissertation is comprised of five integrated manuscripts, as well as introduction and discussion chapters. The first manuscript critically explores the application of the occupational justice framework in research and highlights dominant tendencies, absences, and recommendations for research addressing occupational justice. The second manuscript describes and considers the utility of three participatory digital methodologies (digital storytelling, participatory video/filmmaking, and participatory geographic information systems) for transformative occupation-based research with children and youth. The third manuscript describes the PAR process used with children with disabilities, which employed participatory filmmaking as a research methodology, highlighting different project phases, activities carried out, challenges faced, and strategies used. The fourth manuscript highlights the role of critical reflexivity in addressing ethical tensions in the field by presenting transparent accounts of reflexive notes from facilitators as well as child co-researchers. The fifth manuscript presents the findings from the PAR through participatory and theoretical analyses informed by critical occupational science and critical disability perspectives. The participatory thematic analysis, which was completed in collaboration with children with disabilities, explicates issues of occupational injustices, ways injustices are shaped by context, and how occupations impact context. The theoretical analysis of information gathered with children with disabilities as well as parents, teachers, and service providers, further explicates the situatedness of the injustices expressed by children. This manuscript also highlights types of transformation addressed and occurring through this work.
Overall, this dissertation explicates nuanced understandings on occupation, occupational justice, and disability, through perspectives from the Global South. It contributes to methodological and theoretical developments within critical occupational science scholarship, as well as highlights implications for educational policy development addressing issues of inclusion and occupational justice within a rural Indian context.