III National Seminary on Research Occupational Therapy: contributions to the Area Development.

Abstract

Since 2009, through the First Occupational Therapy Research National Seminar, researchers have been discussing the field academic institutionalization and the contribution to the development of research and knowledge production in occupational therapy. This text describes and analyzes the Third Research Occupational Therapy National Seminar, held in 2014, at the Federal University of Paraiba (Universidade Federal da Paraíba), through reports of the seminar and the descriptive analysis of the papers published in its Proceedings. It is also presented and discussed the profiles of the participants, and the discussions and contributions from the reports of the 10 Thematic Working Groups. The data analysis indicate that most of the participants were professors, with increasing papers numbers and a greater commitment to the production of knowledge in occupational therapy, which was observed by the papers presented, based on researches, largely due to empirical data on professional practices. It is necessary to achieve bigger legitimacy in the scientific field in order to get access to funding, in research agencies, as well as higher academic insertion. The participants indicated the importance to continue with this Seminar.