‘Practical and reflective’ challenges for occupational therapy’s undergraduation courses in pandemic times

Abstract

The COVID-19 pandemic has conduced to the adoption of measures that bring about changes in the routine and organization of work in universities. The virtual environments have been considered as vectors for undergraduate courses during pandemic addressing, and it’s necessary to produce reflection for this new context. The Rede Nacional de Ensino e Pesquisa em Terapia Ocupacional – RENETO (Brazilian Occupational Therapy Education and Research Association), Brazil, attentive to the issues involved in the formation and production of knowledge in the field, has been searching with peers for ways to carry out a complex reading of reality and, from this, create and implement strategies to be able to deal with the demands imposed, respecting the regionalities in which the undergraduate courses are running on. Thus, based on a survey carried out with the coordinators of Occupational Therapy courses, which aimed to understand how the undergraduate courses have adhered or not to teaching through digital platforms, this paper intends to reflect on decision making about pedagogical, ethical and political dimensions in the scope of academic activities not only in the context of pandemic, but also considering the projections of the new reality imposed by the pandemic. However, there is still a somewhat disjointed scenario in the area and realities significantly different, between public and private institutions.