School Administrators’ Perceptions of Occupational Therapy’s Role in General Education Initiatives

Abstract

ABSTRACTThe Every Student Succeeds Act of 2015 has outlined an expanded role for school-based occupational therapy practitioners (OTPs) as specialized instructional support personnel in general education. However, OTPs have continued to be viewed as related service professionals under special education due to barriers of high caseloads and decreased administrative support. This study sought to understand school administrators’ perceptions of occupational therapy’s role in general education initiatives. A qualitative sample of ten Connecticut school administrators was utilized to answer the research question. Data was acquired through individual semi-structured interviews. Data analysis indicated three key themes which include school administrators highly regard OTPs, believe occupational therapy’s role should be expanded in general education, and are open to occupational therapy’s full scope of practice in the educational setting. However, administrators noted time and budget barriers hindered OTPs’ role expansion to support general education initiatives.KEYWORDS: Occupational therapyqualitative researcheducationschool administrators AcknowledgementsThe authors would like to acknowledge the school administrators who participated in this study.Disclosure statementNo potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).Additional informationFundingThe author(s) reported there is no funding associated with the work featured in this article.