Until this year, occupational therapy was one of the few health science disciplines that did not have its own education journal.
Thanks to the work of some EKU faculty members, the second issue of the Journal of Occupational Therapy Education (JOTE) was released this summer, months after the inaugural issue in April, which coincided with the centennial celebration of the American Occupational Therapy Association.
Editor Dr. Dana Howell and associate editors Dr. Cindy Hayden and Dr. Renee Causey-Upton, all of the EKU faculty, spent a year establishing the need for an occupational therapy education journal and mining resources to launch the publication.
“A 2016 University President’s Fellow award provided start-up funding, and we worked with EKU librarians Laura Edwards, Linda Sizemore and Karen Gilbert, as well as staff at our online publisher, Bepress, to establish guidelines and format the journal,” Hayden said.
Additional occupational therapy educators were recruited to join the JOTE editorial board: Dr. Anita Mitchell, University of Tennessee at Memphis; Dr. Christine Myers, University of Florida; and Dr. Kathleen Matuska, St. Catherine’s University in Minnesota.
At the annual AOTA conference in 2016, the first call for papers was placed. The editors also recruited “many well-qualified peer reviewers to ensure excellence and high rigor in this publication of the scholarship of teaching and learning.”
Hayden said JOTE is “devoted solely to disseminating open access, high quality, peer-reviewed research about teaching and learning as it relates to occupational therapy and occupational science.” The journal includes the categories of original research, theory, educational innovations, book reviews and new educational technology.
JOTE, she added, “seeks to discover and promote best practices for the education of occupational therapists and occupational therapy assistants at pre- and post-licensure levels. JOTE advances education for occupational science and occupational therapy by featuring articles that improve the empirical understanding of teaching and learning theories and methods. JOTE publishes original scholarly articles that are of significance to occupational therapy educators. Submissions to the journal related to the undergraduate, graduate, postgraduate and continuing education levels for occupational therapy and occupational therapy assistant students are encouraged.”
The journal can be accessed at encompass.eku.edu/jote.