A mosaic of experiences and narratives about collective practices in occupational therapy: methodological considerations¹

Abstract

In the last decade, studies in occupational therapy have emphasized aspects of collective construction in narrative research that reflect on the ethical precepts essential to the anonymity of participants, while guaranteeing their protagonism. This article discusses a methodological approach that is little used, namely, the narrative constructed through non-anonymous collaboration between participants and researchers, seeking to identify the challenges and potential of shared elaboration. Therefore, the article presents: 1. description of the study's conceptions and its general characteristics, notably the theoretical and methodological references that support the reflexive, dialogic and collective construction of the stories; 2. potentialities and difficulties of the participatory approach in the construction of knowledge in occupational therapy. One of the central points of the adopted methodology, the revelation of the participants' identities, which emphasizes the writing of stories in the first person, is not yet consolidated in the current designs of participatory studies carried out with occupational therapists and can be considered an innovative action for the field of occupational therapy. Technical training requirements are presented, such as communication skills and political agreement, as well as the ethical and epistemological consequences of the professionals' experience. Furthermore, it is worth mentioning that, when narrating in the first person, without pseudonyms, the trajectory of the professionals, we face several challenges, such as the fine line between personal and professional life, as well as the social commitments and political consequences of the participants' actions, in addition to the involuntary exposure of third parties, who would not necessarily authorize their actions to be made public.

Keywords:
Research/Stakeholder Participation; Occupational Therapy; Collective Actions; Personal Narrative

Resumo

Na última década, estudos em terapia ocupacional têm enfatizado aspectos da construção coletiva em pesquisas narrativas que refletem sobre os preceitos éticos essenciais à anonimidade de participantes, ao mesmo tempo em que garantem o seu protagonismo. Este artigo discute um percurso metodológico pouco usado, qual seja, a narrativa construída por meio da colaboração não anônima entre participantes e pesquisadores, buscando identificar os desafios e as potencialidades da elaboração compartilhada. Para tanto, o artigo apresenta: 1. descrição das concepções do estudo e suas características gerais, notadamente os referenciais teóricos e metodológicos que sustentam a construção reflexiva, dialógica e coletiva das histórias; 2. potencialidades e dificuldades da abordagem participativa na construção de conhecimento em terapia ocupacional. Um dos pontos centrais da metodologia adotada, a revelação das identidades das participantes, que enfatiza a escrita das histórias em primeira pessoa, ainda não está consolidado nos desenhos atuais de estudos participativos realizados com terapeutas ocupacionais e pode ser considerado uma ação inovadora para o campo da terapia ocupacional. São apresentados os requerimentos da formação técnica, como as habilidades de comunicação e pactuação política, bem como os desdobramentos éticos e epistemológicos da experiência das profissionais. Ademais, cabe registrar que, ao narrar em primeira pessoa, sem pseudônimos, a trajetória das profissionais, enfrentamos diversos desafios, como a linha tênue entre vida pessoal e vida profissional, e também os compromissos sociais e consequências políticas das ações das participantes, além da exposição involuntária de terceiros, que não necessariamente autorizariam que suas ações fossem tornadas públicas.

Palavras-chave:
Pesquisa/Participação dos Interessados; Terapia Ocupacional; Ações Coletivas; Narrativa Pessoal

Introduction

Creating a collective fabric on what occupational therapists do

I made my own path, and my path made me (Emicida).

The methodological course discussed in this article makes up a study that aimed to investigate occupational therapy practices based on the concept of collective occupation (Allegretti, 2020). The original study also identified how collective practices have been discussed and thought by occupational therapists in Brazil, showing the tensions between individualistic approaches and interventions of a collective nature. The research sought to contribute to overcoming this dichotomy, which has long been problematized in the literature (Kantartzis, 2019; Kronenberg & Pollard, 2006; Palacios, 2015; Ramugondo & Kronenberg, 2015; Tolvett, 2013).

Professional practices are historically constituted, in addition to including characteristics that are social and discursive, becoming collective property, and not just the personal property of each person involved (Kemmis, 2005). It is worth mentioning that practices are shaped by practitioners and by their intentions, expectations and values, ​​according to whom they are intended to serve (people, social groups and entire societies).

Changing practice requires not only changes in the actions of individuals, but also changes in the social, discursive and historical dimensions in which practices are constituted and reconstituted, and how they evolve over time. This is inevitably a political process beyond the responsibility of individual professionals, although each professional can undoubtedly contribute to the evolution of practices (Kemmis, 2005, p. 393).

Farias et al. (2019) detailed the study methodology that focused on social transformation through occupation-based actions. The project adopted the collective (non-anonymous) construction of narratives; it was observed that theoretical and methodological frameworks (Poland & Cavalcante Junior, 2010; Kinsella & Whiteford, 2009) favor the relationship between researchers and participants, because it allows shared experiences and provides their engagement. In that study, the participants were informed from the beginning about the impossibility of guaranteeing complete anonymity, due to the “[...] public nature of the work and the visibility of specialists in the social field [...]” (Farias et al., 2019, p. 9). In this article, we report the construction of a similar methodological path, articulated by the two researchers, with the collaboration of the participants. In the first part, the concepts of the original study and its general characteristics are briefly described. In the second part, we present a reflection on the structure of the collaboration built between the research team and the participants. In the third part, we approach the writing built in a collaborative way and the interaction between participants and researchers, as well as the decision about revealing the participants' identities and its ethical consequences. At the end, we reflect on the possible implications of this type of methodology in the construction of knowledge in occupational therapy.

Conceptions and characteristics of the study: organizing an inclusive, powerful and democratic space for reflection

When spider webs unite, they can tie up a lion (African proverb).

For the reflection on the elaboration of a specific modality of professional practice, a qualitative and participatory study was carried out through a guide for the interviews and the collaborative construction of narratives. The production of data took place with the narratives of nine occupational therapists who have experience in collective practices for at least one year. The methodology valued and prioritized theoretical and methodological references that guide the reflexive, dialogic and collective construction of stories (Bastos & Santos, 2013; Chizzotti, 2003; Cunha, 1997; Farias et al., 2019; Freire, 1984; Hilário et al., 2018; Montenegro & Alves, 1997).

The study aimed to: 1. investigate how occupational therapists think/develop the collective dimension of their actions; 2. identify, based on the practices of occupational therapists aimed at collectives, the ideas, theories and interfaces of these actions; 3. identify and describe which models, theories or disciplines, inside and outside occupational therapy, inform the conceptions of these actions; and 4. map and describe the collective practices carried out by the participants.

The research inclusion criteria were: being an occupational therapist, working in Brazilian territory and having at least one year of experience with collective interventions. The type of institution/area in which the interventions were developed was not an excluding factor, which allowed us to cover different areas and contexts of action. Although it was not an inclusion criterion, during the development of the fieldwork, we sought to cover as many regions of the country as possible, in an attempt to understand the practices of professionals in different cultural contexts.

To identify and invite the professionals, the “snowball sampling” technique was used, which consisted of carrying out a search in the virtual or personal networks of occupational therapists (Vinuto, 2014). This measure allowed the gathering of a group of occupational therapists interested in producing reports of their experiences on the subject in question who work in different contexts. After identification, the first people who accepted the invitation to participate were chosen. Subsequently, a letter was sent to each participant, with a brief explanation about the study and the next steps.

All interviews were conducted individually, with an average duration of 2 hours. Each participant chose the way they would prefer to do it, with the options being: Skype, phone call or face-to-face. All interviews were audio recorded. After transcribing the interviews, carried out by the first author, we (including participants and authors here) continued the work of collaborative production of narratives, which will be better explained in the next topic.

At the end of the interview, there was a free space for comments on other aspects that the participants considered relevant. Furthermore, for most questions, examples were requested, highlighting the concreteness of the practices and seeking a better understanding of the reflections. The transcript of each interview was carefully carried out, followed by the reading and re-reading of the stories in search of themes for analysis (Braun & Clarke, 2006).

The team of researchers consisted of the first author, at the time a doctoral student, and her supervisor, who worked together in the design and development of the study. Nine occupational therapists participated in the study, eight women and one man, from different regions of Brazil, shown in the following Figure 1. The prevalence is observed in the Brazilian Southeast region, with 6 participants and 3 professionals in São Paulo state and 3 in Rio de Janeiro state. And one participant of the North of Brazil, Manaus city, one of the Northeast of the country, Aracaju city, and one of the South of Brazil, Curitiba city. As for the time working with collective practices, the experiences ranged from 4 to 30 years. At the time of the research, 3 participants were working in the public network as occupational therapists; 5, as professors in public universities; and 1 combined work in the basic network and teaching.

Figure 1
Presentation of study participants. Source: Region of operation at the time of research.

The construction of first-person stories: the challenge of collaboratively constructed narrative

Things change in the slow fast of times (João Guimarães Rosa).

Based on the aspects analyzed in the research, notably, the collaborative construction of the narratives of the participants and the revelation of their identities, this article is based on two questions: 1. How to think about the research methodology based on the interactions that happen during the process of field production? 2. How do methodological choices configure the participatory research process?

One of the challenges of this project was the collaborative construction of the stories with the participants. Collaborative research has proved to be an important strategy for dealing with problems faced in the daily lives of workers, thus enabling the same theme to be critically reflected and analyzed and collectively thought about solutions to such obstacles (Boavida & Ponte, 2002; Furlan & Campos, 2014; Gama & Nakayama, 2017).

From the beginning, we realized that, by anonymizing the process of analyzing the narratives, we would lose important aspects for the contextualization of the narrated trajectories. As occupational therapy is still a small profession in Brazil, even few references can allow the identification of some professionals. However, anonymity is still extremely frequent in studies in the area. It was then the moment for us to make the decision to abandon anonymity and adopt the revelation of identities. Faced with this decision, which completely altered the process, it was necessary to return to each participant to review the previously agreed rules. Upon group acceptance, a change to the project previously approved by the Ethics Committee² was prepared. After authorization from the Ethics Committee, we sought new procedures for writing and synthesizing the stories. Despite the disclosure of the participants’ identities, the names of third parties and places/institutions were kept confidential.

The nine interviews resulted in long transcripts, which needed to be reordered and synthesized. At first, we sought to reduce colloquiality, as well as elements of oral conversation that would not have a semantic function in the written text. Once that was done, the result of this first work was sent to the participants for conference and complementation. The returns allowed re-elaborations, as well as greater exploration and elucidation of the themes, as proposed by Cunha (1997). As is known, the narratives are open to the meanings of the narrators, allowing the emergence of new reflections on the subject studied, through memory and lived experiences (Silva & Pádua, 2010). As an example of this, previously narrated phenomena were better explained or more recent work experiences that dialogued with collective practices were included.

The revelation of the participants’ identities: navigating conservative ethical precepts

Admittedly, research projects often present unpredictable challenges (Farias et al., 2019; Guerriero & Minayo, 2013). In an analysis of the historical process of the resolutions that guide the ethical aspects of the National Health Council, the biomedical model is historically preponderant (Guerriero & Minayo, 2013). This configuration has been a challenge for researchers in the Social and Human Sciences, who have found it difficult to have their research approved by the system formed by the Research Ethics Committees (CEP) and the National Research Ethics Commission (CONEP). In empirical-social research, depending on the cases, it is essential to be careful with the preservation of the participating subjects and their information, because, depending on the situation, the data must be confidential, so as not to harm the subjects and institutions involved. On the other hand, in the case of Social Sciences and Humanities, for example, most studies consider:

The researchers and their interlocutors are active actors in the research process, since, generally, knowledge of the social and human sciences is generated in intersubjectivity. In addition, the researcher usually enters the context of the participants and ethnographers, for example, start living in the communities where they study. This intense coexistence between the research team and participants generates a type of knowledge that does not occur a priori, and, therefore, cannot be foreseen in a research protocol. (Guerriero & Minayo, 2013, p. 769).

The review of the protocol by the Ethics Committee, which was denied in the first request, required on our part the search for theoretical-methodological references that supported the ethical aspects in the new model, care that demanded a support plan in the process of data construction with the participants, this time, with their identities revealed (Guerriero & Minayo, 2013). It is worth emphasizing that only one study conducted by an occupational therapist, carried out in Canada, adopted similar procedures; it was identified at the time of the project (Farias et al., 2019) and served as evidence for the proposed change.

At the end, in our research, each narrative aimed to express the frank and solidary dialogue between the first author and each occupational therapist colleague who, generously, was willing to listen and tell stories. In the case of the participants, they lent their time and memory to help build this mosaic of collective experiences (Farias et al., 2019). In addition to this construction made by the collaboration of each participant and the group, according to Silva & Pádua (2010), this is also an important learning to (re)think our difficulties and limitations, as well as think about the incessant processes of change. The first-person narrative, without pseudonyms, of the professional trajectory revealed the fine line between personal and professional life, public commitments and the political consequences of professional actions in the public space. In addition, the possible connection between these professionals and third parties, who would not necessarily authorize their actions to be made public, required us to avoid all references to team members, managers, community leaders, among others, which certainly may have reduced the accuracy of the reports.

The implications of the collaborative approach in the construction of knowledge in occupational therapy: an inventory of affection, passion and persistance

I saw that swallows know better about rains than scientists (Manoel de Barros).

Benjamin (1994, p. 205) considers the narrative as an “artisanal form of communication”. Far from being pure information or a report, “the narrative immerses the thing in the narrator's life and then takes it out of him, leaving its mark, like the potter's hand on the clay in the vase”. The narrators of this study were, thus, imprinting their marks on the way they shared their experiences with collective practices. This often subverted the chronological order, as it relied on events that occurred before training, as in Ricardo's account:

I left home when I was 15 years old and had the experience of living in the streets for a month. I had this journey in the streets and then I went to an ecclesial community, a Franciscan Catholic church, also community-based, which welcomed young people. This basic ecclesial community was a watershed for me, because I started to get involved a lot in community activities - I participated in youth ministry, in homeless people's ministry, in housing ministry and I participated a lot in the movements that the ecclesial community organized with the surrounding community. So, I developed a series of public activities, demonstrations, visits to the homes of residents, articulation with the sub-prefecture of the region, for a year and a half (Ricardo).

According to Riessman (1993), the act of telling stories about past experiences seems to be a universal human activity. The narrations are made in such a way that the stories are linked to certain goals. In this way, the author points out that “analysis in narrative studies opens up to ways of telling about the experience [...] We ask, why was the story told that way?” (Riessman, 1993, p. 2). Studies that pay special attention to how and why people tell stories consider that “the analysis of how and what people narrate in research interviews refers to broader sociocultural structures, to the social universe in which the interactants transit” (Bastos & Santos, 2013, p. 13). This aspect was evident, for example, in the narrative built by Rosângela about her experience in the northern region of the country. The intertwining between the political achievements of the profession, the result of the collective actions of occupational therapists and her personal trajectory is observed:

Here in the North we are strengthening ourselves as a category. Today, we are 26 occupational therapists. We have WhatsApp groups of occupational therapists from Amazonas and Roraima and we created ABRATO-AM, because before this, we had no representation to be able to communicate with any university. This is how we are strengthening ourselves. In addition, the first occupational therapy course at a private university was opened. So, that is why we decided to form the association in order to start the dialogue with the universities in the State. We are celebrating this process! (Rosângela).

In addition, studies that discuss narratives have also focused on other dimensions of narrative construction, as well as asking why narratives are so present in our daily lives and how they relate to each one's experience (Bastos, 2004). From this perspective, narrative comes to be understood as a way of basic organization of human experience, through which it is possible to study social life in general. For the author, the act of telling stories is a social practice. As far as experience is concerned, this act allows:

Expressing a concern to problematize and understand how individuals live their world, which brings us to the ideas of consciousness and subjectivity, but also, and especially, of intersubjectivity and social action. Problematizing the idea of ​​experience means assuming that the way individuals understand and actively engage in the situations in which they find themselves throughout their lives cannot be deduced from a coherent and ordered system of ideas, symbols or representations (Alves & Rabelo, 1999, p. 11).

Bastos (2004) reflects on the relationship between experience and report, seeking to identify how, based on the report, people construct the sense of who they are. By integrating discourse and culture in the interpretation of social life, the author emphasizes that studying the “[...] narratives of people, in everyday interactions, can be enlightening to understand both the social order that surrounds us, and the possibilities of its transformation” (Bastos, 2004, p. 118).

Experiences that marked the beginning of academic training illustrated some everyday interactions, situated in the attention to people, groups and collectives. When mentioning how they entered collective practices, the participants said:

I graduated in 1996, at USP, and soon after, I became a collaborator in the occupational therapy course in 1998, 1999, in the field of activity that was Community-Based Rehabilitation (CBR). As of 1998, I started to work with professors of the occupational therapy course in a community called Jardim de Abril, which is a perspective of territorial action, health and rehabilitation (Marta Aoki).

My trajectory has been closely linked to the issue of works that I consider within a collective perspective, from the very beginning. My first job as an occupational therapist was linked to an extension project at the University (Project Metuia USP/UFSCar), called the Casarão project, which was the first project that Metuia started with a partnership between the university and a specific community. The community was linked to the housing movement in the city of São Paulo (Ana Paula Malfitano).

In summary, beyond the form, people remember what happened, put the experience in a sequence and seek tangible explanations for it, inserted in a chain of events that build individual and social life, according to the experiences of this group. Another quality of storytelling involves intentional states that comfort or at least make what happens familiar (Jovchelovitch & Bauer, 2002).

For Martha and Monica, joining the university as professors marked the beginning of their collective practices:

I worked in some institutions that had both individual and collective practices, but the work done as a professor is what seems to be the most important for me to talk about my collective practices, at the Federal University of Sergipe, since 2014 (Martha M.).

After 2 years, at the end of 2014, I became an effective teacher, self-dedicating only to the university. Together with other co-workers, we started to think about extension actions in social occupational therapy, from different fronts. Together with a colleague, as we already have experience and the desire to work with youths, we started to design the project Youth(s): urban art-culture interventions in the territory, which is what I develop today (Monica).

In this perspective, the narrator reflects on the narrated events, in the search for this thread that makes sense to them, based on the present time, also projecting the future in the different dimensions of the subject's experience intertwined in time (Minayo, 2010). Chronology is subsumed into memory, but it also seeks to give meaning to the narrated facts. When reflecting on this aspect, Neves (2013) organizes the temporal dimensions into 2 levels: the first dimension in a past moment, a moment in life when some events marked the subject; the second dimension in the present moment, in which the subject remembers, brings to the narrative what marked them, allowing them to project actions in the future. The author reflects on this dimension of time as “[...] reconstruction and updating of experience through language, via narrative and memory valued and possible in a group that inserts the subject into its history, a group in which the subject recognizes and is recognized [...]” (Neves, 2013, p. 241). Therefore, a common place can be created, in the sharing of actions and speeches. For Santos (2013), one of the main reasons to use narrative is to understand it as:

The study of how people sew dispersed elements to carry out this construction, which can help in understanding how these productions shape the meaning of human existence, both personally and collectively in various social contexts (Santos, 2013, p. 27).

That being said, it is important to understand which aspects integrate the act of narrating the experience as a way of knowing the different positions on the same theme; in this study, this is constituted as the development of collective practices of occupational therapists.

The elaboration of comments and questions related to the narratives, proposed by the first author, favored the construction of a space for the interview to take place in a non-prescriptive way, allowing the free construction of the experiences of the person interviewed, which helped the researcher to have a more precise look in the narrative construction process. According to Santos (2013, p. 27), when assuming this position, questions and answers need to be understood as “co-participatory discursive constructions”. In the study, the construction of this co-participation took place through reflections and deepening of what was discussed with the group of occupational therapists through the research guide, but always in line with the theoretical frameworks, which were based on a collective research perspective.

Discussing the narratives with the participants, being it aligned with the research’s objectives, was a very instigating experience, with the possibility of exploring previously unnoticed understandings and feelings, allowing to clarify the investigated facts (Cunha, 1997). For Bastos & Santos (2013), focusing the analysis on the way in which the speech was produced makes it possible to understand how the people interviewed produce evaluations based on a worldview and how they manage their social identities in the contexts of unique interviews. In that regard,

The management of social identities is seen as a collaborative process between interviewer and interviewee, between the formulation of questions and answers. Researchers work with the perception that the interview event is an interactional event in which people articulate the production of social identities (Bastos & Santos, 2013, p. 11).

In the process of the interviews, the importance of the specific history of each participant was also observed, at which time the reading of their collective work was sought. The narratives merged aspects of everyday life, such as personal experiences that impacted the professional trajectory, at the same time that work events were reported and contextualized. For example, Rosângela narrates her arrival in Paricatuba (1989), a community where she lived with her family, with scarce resources and low quality of life (SIC):

I began to understand the dynamics of the community. The children were the first to arrive at my house, because of the dolls. They were very important for my adaptation to the place. In the morning I saw the women coming down with a basin with dishes to wash, so I bought a basin for myself, I quickly collected my dishes and went down with them. They didn't talk to me, but I kept an eye on them, watching what they did and the children would teach me. So, I learned with them, how to place a board on top of two stones to put the dishes on the riverbank to wash, how to treat fish.

At the same time, Rosângela articulates her technical knowledge and her work experiences in caring for the population:

It was a collective that needed some information and that I could contribute to their quality of life, to their life projects, to their understanding. Until one of the people said to me “Wow, Dona Rô, I didn't even know what an individual was”. I said, “Why? What did you think was an individual?”. As a response, I heard “I don't know, but I thought it was a very bad thing”. Faced with this answer, I asked: “But why did you think it was a bad thing?”. She said: “Because when my mother fights with someone, she says: “That individual”. Faced with this, I began to understand the universe of the other.

Conducting the interviews from this interactional perspective allowed the appropriation of the stories by the participants, in addition to a greater understanding for the researcher about how a group of occupational therapists thinks and develops their practices based on a collective perspective. Although with the mark of each participant, we found collective markers of the processes experienced. In fact, in all narratives, in addition to the singularities of the stories, collective historical processes are also revealed (Silva & Pádua, 2010).

A mosaic of experiences: collectively telling unique stories

Memory is a fabric made from the presente, it is the present that pushes us towards the past, a fundamental unmissable ‘trip’, so that we can bring out the threads of our history our life, or the life of another (Walter Benjamin).

In the case of specific skills for field production, learning was built in the process of interviewing. Since the research pilot, the importance of understanding the interviews based on an interactional perspective was considered (Bastos, 2004; Bastos & Santos, 2013; Santos, 2013). Over the course of the interviews, the interaction and collaborative construction became more coherent and fluid. According to Santos (2013), an interruption at the appropriate time can help, as it expresses the researcher's interest in what the participants narrate about their experiences, with attention to not losing focus on the topic of the interview. In the understanding of Santos (2013), the elaboration of comments and questions related to the participants' narratives also offers space for the experience reports to happen more freely, helping the researcher to have a more precise look at the process of construction of the narratives. An example of this was to understand how the participants started their work with some collectives, how they arrived at these practices, as well as how it was possible to insert each one in the narrated contexts. To this end, the first author was guided by associations, experiences and reminiscences brought by the group of participants. In fact, the interest of the researchers and the group in the theme was an important guide for the narratives. According to Santos (2013, p. 27), the researcher needs to consider that:

One of the main advantages of working with narrative is that it is an instrument through which people attribute unity and coherence to their existence, and the study of how people sew dispersed elements together to carry out this construction can help in understanding how these productions shape the meaning of human existence at the personal and collective level in various social contexts.

Likewise, the care taken with the horizontality of relationships and the absolute freedom to include additional themes significantly qualified the research methodology adopted. In addition, the final writing of the first-person narratives, carried out in close collaboration between the participants and the researchers, guaranteed the production of stories that are, at the same time, private and collective, personal and non-transferable, as well as revealing a knowledge/collective doing that gives rise to hope and transformation (Paro et al., 2020).

Final considerations

Stories that resist and multiply in the rugged daily life of occupational therapists.

I am overly moved, by nature and by profession. I think it is dreadful for someone to live without passions (Graciliano Ramos).

In this article, we approach a methodology still little explored in the area of ​​Brazilian occupational therapy, which made possible the collective construction of narratives, consolidating a collaborative methodology that certainly still needs to be improved. To give you an idea, a survey of articles that record collaborative processes between researchers and occupational therapists, carried out in the last two years in Cadernos Brasileiros de Terapia Ocupacional, identified only two publications that waived anonymity (Cardinalli & Silva, 2021; Pereira et al., 2021). All other articles reporting similar research used fictitious names. In this way, the collaborative process and the flexibility for the necessary changes showed us the importance of a certain methodological boldness, as well as additional measures of care for the participants.

Among the limitations observed, it is worth mentioning that the project was initially conceived with support from a full perspective of action research, in which extensive collaborative work was foreseen, from the formulation of the research instrument to the analysis of the data, which was not entirely possible. Unfortunately, reasons beyond the scope of the project (deadlines, scheduling difficulties, etc.) prevented the group from working together until the analysis was completed, with the analysis process being carried out only by the researchers.

Furthermore, although an effort has been made to obtain occupational therapists from different regions of the country who were involved in the practice, it cannot be said that this group represents the professional contingent in Brazil. Likewise, the snowball sampling that helped in the identification of occupational therapists to compose the group, may have generated limitations regarding the reach of different professionals in the Brazilian territory.

In this study, we seek to give visibility to the therapist who is in the daily practices of the services, working on the front lines of countless places throughout Brazil. We insist that co-participatory methodologies, similar to those developed in this research, be better explored, in order to ensure that collaborative projects between researchers and network professionals are facilitated. Moving in this direction also with other partnerships, with users, with other professionals or with members of the communities involved in the daily work of occupational therapists can favor the deepening of essential aspects to the strengthening of our profession. Finally, we hope that this work will contribute, albeit minimally, to the consolidation of public policies that recognize and legitimize the guarantee of full occupational rights to all Brazilian women and men, the main reason for the work and professional motivation of the group of therapists who participated in it. We hope that our future works will consolidate the writing of articles co-authored with the participants, in which it will be possible to better explore the singular and collective narratives, as well as the multiple facets of collective actions developed by occupational therapists in Brazil.

Acknowledgements

Research participants who propose to build a collective process of knowledge for an area of occupational therapy.

• 1
  Research approved by the Ethics Committee for Research on Human Beings - CAAE: 98908818.1.0000.5504.
• The authors of this article support the fight against the use of the generic masculine (false neuter) in publications. Thus, whenever possible, we will use the generic feminine, as we speak of a universe composed of 8 women and 1 man (Franco & Cervera, 2006).
• 2
  To formalize this process, an amendment to Plataforma Brasil was necessary, clarifying, formalizing and theoretically justifying the request for authorization for the change through a document that also showed the changes made to the ICF (Informed Consent Form).
• How to cite: Allegretti, M., & Magalhães, L. (2022). A mosaic of experiences and narratives about collective practices in occupational therapy: methodological considerations. Cadernos Brasileiros de Terapia Ocupacional, 30, e3163. https://doi.org/10.1590/2526-8910.ctoAO2426316302

• Funding Source

  Coordination for the Improvement of Higher Education Personnel – CAPES – Code 001.

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Edited by

Section editor

Profa. Dra. Marta Carvalho de Almeida

Publication Dates

• Publication in this collection
  06 June 2022
• Date of issue
  2022

History

• Received
  07 Oct 2021
• Reviewed
  13 Dec 2021
• Reviewed
  14 Feb 2022
• Accepted
  23 Mar 2022