Hitting the books: textbooks as cultural artifacts of a splintered field

ABSTRACT Therapeutic recreation (TR) presents two conceptualizations of recreation: as rehabilitation or as part of overall wellness. Textbooks are cultural artifacts used for passing disciplinary knowledge to students. The study purpose was to understand how TR practice is constructed and reproduced in textbooks, with attentiveness to hidden discourses. Selected chapters from two highly subscribed TR textbooks in Canada and the USA underwent a discourse analysis. Using a critical disability studies framework, respective thematic distinctions arose: individual responsibility for health, professionalization of TR, and medicalization of recreation; and being in relationship, disability as diversity, and solution and strength-based focus. The respective authors’ TR assumptions of either ameliorating deficits or building on existing strengths led to differing TR goals, varied practice contexts, and distinctive positions on relationship building – creating divergent discourses and discord at a cost to the field and those utilizing its services.