Evidence based profession?
I'm going to talk about something that may seem strange or even funny to some but it's a serious matter, especially for children with special needs.
Sensory Integration Therapy is an intervention that's used to hopefully improve a child's neurological processing of sensory information via a series of sensory stimulation and hopefully such improvement leads to other gains. Take note the the word "hopefully" appearing twice.
This therapy is essentially the mainstay of occupational therapist in the field of intervention for children with special needs. However, the weakness is this: there is ongoing controversy surrounding its efficacy. The consensus of researchers outside the field of occupational therapy is that it simply doesn't work.
With more and more research debunking its usefulness, how did occupational therapist react? Do they look at the evidence, agree and move on? And maybe even work together with researchers to find a better method? I sure hope the majority of them do that.
Unfortunately, there are a few of them who reacted defensively. This is understandable because their profession's prestige is at risk if people stop consulting them to implement intervention for children with special needs. However, I would argue that it is a greater risk for them to ignore evidence and to move on to better and effective method.
The longer they deny evidence, the greater risk it is to the poor children, their parents and teachers for wasting time - time that could have been better spent on evidence based practice - and raising false hope.
So please, leave your pride aside and work together for the betterment of the children.
Sensory Integration Therapy is an intervention that's used to hopefully improve a child's neurological processing of sensory information via a series of sensory stimulation and hopefully such improvement leads to other gains. Take note the the word "hopefully" appearing twice.
This therapy is essentially the mainstay of occupational therapist in the field of intervention for children with special needs. However, the weakness is this: there is ongoing controversy surrounding its efficacy. The consensus of researchers outside the field of occupational therapy is that it simply doesn't work.
With more and more research debunking its usefulness, how did occupational therapist react? Do they look at the evidence, agree and move on? And maybe even work together with researchers to find a better method? I sure hope the majority of them do that.
Unfortunately, there are a few of them who reacted defensively. This is understandable because their profession's prestige is at risk if people stop consulting them to implement intervention for children with special needs. However, I would argue that it is a greater risk for them to ignore evidence and to move on to better and effective method.
The longer they deny evidence, the greater risk it is to the poor children, their parents and teachers for wasting time - time that could have been better spent on evidence based practice - and raising false hope.
So please, leave your pride aside and work together for the betterment of the children.
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