Educational design research: designing a professional master's curriculum for sensory integration training within the South African context

English: Sensory integration, as a field of specialisation, originated in the profession of occupational therapy. Successfully and purposefully engaging in the activities of everyday life depends partially on sensory integration. Postgraduate training in sensory integration is highly sought after, both nationally and internationally. However, training aimed at achieving advanced competencies in sensory integration and advancing it as a specialist field in occupational therapy is currently not part of a higher education qualification in South Africa. The few available international training programmes, rooted in the work of Jean Ayres, the originator of sensory integration, are focused on foundational competencies of theory, assessment and intervention. At present, there are no advanced or contextualized training programmes relevant for developing countries such as South Africa. The purpose of this study was to design a curriculum, relevant to the South African context but also internationally acknowledged, for a professional occupational therapy master’s degree in sensory integration (M OT (SI)), designed to train occupational therapists with advanced competencies, able to meet the needs of all those individuals and their families who struggle with sensory integration difficulties and dysfunctions, whilst also adding to the extant body of knowledge in the field. In the design of the curriculum, the candidate took an axiological stance, setting out to discover and/or confirm practical, real-world knowledge, offering advanced opportunities to attain the competencies needed to solve real-world problems in the field of sensory integration. Pragmatic knowledge needed to be created, and an epistemology of pragmatism was therefore followed using educational design research as a methodology. Using the flexible and iterative features of this methodology, drawing mainly on qualitative methods but also on one strand of quantitative research, the candidate arrived at a final curriculum, ready for submission to the relevant institutional and statutory processes of approval and accreditation. The research process included an analysis and exploration phase, comprising one micro-cycle, leading to a first skeleton prototype of the curriculum. Five objectives were set, including a data-generating activity involving international experts in the field of Ayres Sensory Integration (ASI®). The second and most comprehensive phase of the research process was the design and construction phase. This comprised three micro-cycles, each with its own aim and phase objectives. The data on the views and opinions of various stakeholders ensured contextual relevancy. Combining these with the data generated on the challenges and enablers of master students in occupational therapy, the candidate designed and constructed a further two evolving prototypes of the curriculum, culminating in prototype 3. Submitting this prototype once again to the views and opinions both of international experts in ASI® and of curriculum experts, allowed for conclusive refinement of the design, arriving at the final curriculum set as the aim of the study. Taking into account the ‘unending’ processes of institutional and statutory curriculum approval and accreditation, the candidate set a delimitation to the study, which was concluded with the final intended curriculum. Throughout the design process, knowledge was created for future use. This was fed back into the ontological stance of the candidate as she searched for realistic knowledge that was context-appropriate. In writing up of the design process, she created and documented theoretical understandings in the form of the emerging design requirements and design propositions. It is the candidate’s hope that the curriculum, once delivered, will open up an additional, specialist career pathway for occupational therapists, advancing service delivery and expanding the knowledge base in the field. A further hope is that this study will raise awareness and cultivate the use of educational design research in the development of curriculums, especially in the profession of occupational therapy.