Date of Award

2025

Document Type

Scholarly Project

Degree Name

Doctor of Occupational Therapy (OTD)

Department

Occupational Therapy

First Advisor

Andrea Young

Abstract

Introduction: Occupational therapy practitioners can provide holistic, client-centered care that considers each student’s physical, cognitive, social and emotional needs. The Individuals with Disabilities Education Act considers occupational therapists to be specialized instructional support personnel (Pfirman et al., 2023). Pfirman et al. (2023) demonstrated the need for school-based programming and how interdisciplinary teams can help with prevention and wellness. As occupational therapists, we can bridge the mental and behavioral health needs and the skills the students need to be successful in school and life. Literature also showed occupational therapists work as instrumental and beneficial for therapy teams in providing sensory interventions. The goal of this project and resulting product was for educators to be able to use sensory tools for their students to help them better access and participate in their education.

Methodology: A literature review was completed to gather evidence-based literature for school-based practice and sensory regulation in classrooms. The Ecology of Human Performance (Dunn, 2017) model was used to inform the creation of sensory closets and guidebook. These closets will be a holding place for teachers to borrow different sensory diet tools and guidebook. A guidebook was created for educators, outlining appropriate tools for their students' needs. It also includes a Response to Intervention (RTI) handout to guide teachers through a multi-tiered approach.

Product: A guidebook for educators in elementary schools was created to inform them on appropriate sensory tools and breaks to use when students are dysregulated. It is broken down into different sensory areas: movement, posture support, auditory, visual, and tactile. This will vi allow occupational therapists and educators to collaborate and implement multi-tiered approaches.

Conclusions: This product is being rolled out into five different elementary programs in a school district. It has the potential to be an effective tool for other elementary programs. One limitation of this product is that the RTI handouts will need to be replenished if programs decide to use a physical copy of the guidebook instead of a digital copy. The guidebook will give teachers more autonomy when supporting their students, allow for collaboration between educators and occupational therapists, and may help alleviate some workload stressors of school-based practitioners.

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