The 26th Vona du Toit Memorial Lecture

Harnessing Human Praxis: Turning our wisdom into practice and impact

Abstract

Human praxis denotes practical wisdom, which through deliberate human action aims at personal and collective transformation, including people’s ideas, commitments and consciousness. The occupational therapy profession has a long history of both enacting human praxis for the evolvement of the profession, and also facilitating it among the people it serves. Occupational therapy can draw on its innate wisdom and ability to accurately read contexts to consciously harness human praxis to render the profession as indispensable as a healthcare profession as well as a profession that can contribute significantly to social development. Consciously harnessing human praxis for change can be done by applying reflective and reflexive critical reasoning; epistemic fluency within multidisciplinary spaces (that could promote better transdisciplinary practices); as well as deconstructing the constituents of human praxis to apply it as a treatment mode. Furthermore, consciously using human praxis can contribute to the fields of education, research and leadership that promote and cultivate human dignity