A school-based occupational therapy programme in Japan was associated with better task-performance and satisfaction ratings among pupils receiving individualised support.
The findings offer an early look at how therapists and teachers might collaborate within ordinary primary schools.
What researchers studied
Researchers evaluated a programme combining Cognitive Orientation to daily Occupational Performance, or CO-OP, with the Partnering for Change service model.
The aim was to support children’s participation through strategies developed with teachers rather than relying exclusively on one-to-one clinical sessions.
The mixed-methods project operated across three public elementary schools serving 936 pupils.
Universal services were introduced school-wide, with more targeted support for some classes and individualised support for 15 children.
Quantitative assessment focused on those 15 pupils, whose mean age was approximately nine and a half years.
Researchers used the Canadian Occupational Performance Measure to assess personally meaningful tasks.
Interviews with five educators explored how the approach functioned in schools.
What they found
The journal’s abstract reports mean performance scores rising from 4.9 to 7.9 and satisfaction scores rising from 5.2 to 8.0 among the 15 individually supported pupils.
Both changes were reported as statistically significant.
Educator interviews described greater emphasis on trying strategies and revising them rather than treating a task as simply right or wrong.
Themes also included the value of specialist consultation, parental collaboration and sharing children’s own goals.
The authors described evidence for individualised services as stronger than evidence for broader school-wide effects.
Benefits at classroom and whole-school levels depended on conditions such as leadership, emotional regulation, group size and ownership of goals.
What it means
Inclusive education often requires collaboration between specialist services and everyday teaching.
This project suggests that practical problem-solving strategies can be incorporated into school routines while preserving children’s participation in selecting their own goals.
The findings support further evaluation of such partnerships, particularly where occupational therapy is not routinely embedded in schools.
They do not show that a particular therapy model will produce the same gains in every classroom.
Important limitation
There was no randomised control group, and the primary numerical outcomes involved only 15 pupils.
The study did not provide standardised outcome evidence for all 936 students, so improvements cannot confidently be attributed to the programme or generalised to whole-school effectiveness.
Source Information
Study: CO-OP-based School Occupational Therapy in Japan: A Mixed-Methods Study Within the Partnering for Change (P4C) Model
Authors: Hiroyasu Shiozu, Mitsuyoshi Okutsu, Sayaka Yamaguchi and Shigeki Kurasawa
Journal / Source: Frontiers in Education
Published: 6 November 2026
