The school-based occupational therapy practitioner's role is to support children and youth's participation in the school environment (Cahill, 2020). To do this, practitioners must use evidence-based practice, which includes being up to date and knowledgeable with current strategies, interventions, and understanding how to implement those with the resources available. Although the literature provides guidelines for the core components of evidence-based practice in the school setting (Cahill & Beisber, 2020), occupational therapists continue to face barriers with putting the evidence into practice (Seruya & Garfinkel, 2020; McCluskey & Lovarini, 2005). Barriers include time, access to paid journal articles, administrators' support, and knowledge of evidence- based practice (Seruya & Garfinkel, 2020; McCluskey & Lovarini, 2005). To overcome the barriers, occupational therapy practitioners need access to professional development courses that support knowledge translation. Research shows that often times practitioners rely on traditional professional development courses, however, little research supports these formats in translating knowledge into practice. To support knowledge translation for occupational therapy practitioners who represent nearly one-fourth of all occupational therapists, professional development workshops need to move away from a traditional workshop format. The course Knowledge to Practice: Supporting School-Based Occupational Therapy Practitioners (KTTPSOTP) is a cutting-edge professional development course, incorporating the most current adult learning principles (Dionyssopoulos, Karalis, & Panitsides, 2014; Duman, 2010; Gozuyesil & Dikici, 2014). The course's critical elements include brain-based learning techniques, peer interaction and collaboration, and hybrid format. By participating in this course, school-based occupational therapy practitioners will receive ongoing support, access to current literature supporting best practices, and crucial peer connections. This course will provide needed support to school-based practitioners while also serving as a blueprint to other professional development courses interested in evolving beyond the traditional format.

Occupational therapy practitioners (OTPs) are reporting low levels of research application in everyday practice, causing a low frequency of evidence-based practice (EBP) implementation (Krueger et al., 2020; Myers, 2019a). A review of the literature demonstrates that individual level factors, such as lack of knowledge, skill, time, and resources for research use, coupled with organizational factors, such as low priority, support, and expectation for EBP, act as barriers to EBP (Wang et al., 2019). This doctoral project aims to build the capacity for research use at both the practitioner and the organization levels through an evidence-based multifaceted intervention program. It will impact the knowledge and skill for understanding and applying research evidence in practice and the frequency of research use in daily practice among school-based occupational therapy practitioners (Sb-OTPs), as well as the organization’s resources, priorities, and environment to support EBP. A mixed-methods design will be used, with a convenience sample of nineteen Sb-OTPs employed at a therapy agency that provides services through contract positions to local school districts. The program consists of four main components of education, provision of resources, working in groups, and organizational supports. The Knowledge-To-Action (KTA) framework (Graham et al., 2009) provides a context-focused iterative process to the program design, from problem identification to sustainability. Continual involvement of all stakeholders, assessment of barriers to tailor the intervention, and adaptation of the knowledge for use in the practice context are KTA-based core program features. The education component is informed by Social Cognitive Theory (SCT) (Bandura, 1986), brain-based learning strategies (Willis, 2006; Yee & Boyd, 2018), and literature supporting blended learning and digital health education formats (Brown et al., 2020; Hew & Lo, 2018; Liu et al., 2016). The program description, implementation, research evaluation plan, and program funding and dissemination are described in detail.

No description available.