Greeting Lecturers from Occupational Therapy Department

I am Mahlako Makhubela and I am an occupational Therapy PHD student in a cotutelle programme registered at Sefako Makgatho Health Sciences University (SMU) in South Africa and Stirling University (UoS) in United Kingdom, in the Department of Occupational Therapy and Faculty of Health Sciences and Sport respectively. I am currently employed as a Lecturer in the department of Occupational Therapy at SMU. The title of the study is “Towards establishing a framework on decolonizing activity selection training in the occupational therapy curricula in the South African context”.

I would like to invite you to participate in a research study aiming to develop a specific framework that can be used for decolonizing activity selection training in the occupational therapy curricula. The objectives of the study are to describe current practices with regard to teaching activity selection in South Africa, to identify commonly used activities in treatment by occupational therapists in South Africa, to describe the experiences of occupational therapy service users regarding activities used during treatment in the public sector in South Africa as well as to design a framework through which activity selection training can be decolonized in the South African context.

As a lecturer in the OT department, you are invited to participate in the study to achieve objective 1 of the study: To describe current practices with regard to teaching activity selection in South Africa

Should you agree to participate in this study, you will be taken through a face to face semi-structured interview on you role as a facilitator of activity selection. We will need approximately 45 minutes of your time whenever you are comfortable and not lecturing.

Research participant criteria:

• Academics staff (lecturers - Professors, Associate Professors, Senior lecturers and Lecturers) at the department of occupational therapy, University of KwaZulu-Natal.
• Male and females of all races.
• Must be facilitating or lecturering activities especially activity selection to undergraduate students in the department.

If you are interested in being part of the study, please email or contact me on:

mahlako.makhubela@smu.ac.za, 0763663944/ (012) 5214573

This study has been ethically reviewed and approved by the Sefako Makgatho University Research Ethics Committee (SMUREC) and University of Stirling Research Ethics Committee as per protocol reference number: SMUREC/H/388/2022:PG

Kindly find attached gatekeepers permission letter, ethical clearance letter, and the information sheet which outlines the details of this study.

We look forward to hearing from you and your participation will be greatly appreciated.

Sincerely,

Mahlako Makhubela (Mahlako.makhubela@smu.ac.za)

Supervisors: Professor Eunice Seekoe (eseekoe@gmail.com) and Prof Jayne Donaldson (jayne.donaldson@stir.ac.uk)

Co-Supervisors: Professor Elelwani Ramugondo (elelwani.ramugondo@uct.ac.za), Dr Frank Kronenberg (frank.kronenberg@gmail.com) and Professor Lieketseng Ned (lieketseng@sun.ac.za)