Diversity and inclusion within an occupational therapy curriculum

Occupational therapy professionals and users of occupational therapy services are becoming increasingly aware of the issues of diversity encompassing their lived experiences, values and meaning systems. This paper situates a discussion of diversity and curriculum development in terms of inclusiveness of people's diverse lived experiences, which include complex combinations of ethnicity, religion, sexual orientation, gender, socioeconomic status and other factors. A pedagogical context is provided based on understandings of culture, inclusiveness and diversity in the healthcare literature. The experience of one occupational therapy department's efforts to create a learning environment that is inclusive of all its participants is used to illustrate effective educational and structural strategies. Despite noble aspirations, much remains to be accomplished regarding how the profession defines competencies in terms of transcultural evaluation standards, outcomes and indicators.