The Curriculum Directors: Influencing Occupational Therapy Education, 1948–1964

This paper depicts an important story in the history of occupational therapy. The story concerns a small group of women, known as the Curriculum Directors, whose influence prevailed in the growth and development of occupational therapy throughout the 1950s. The account is synthesized from both written history sources and oral history interviews with group members and their contemporaries. It characterizes the Curriculum Directors and describes their influence on the profession as well as others’ perceptions of their accomplishments. This paper also chronicles the forces that emerged in reaction to the Curriculum Directors’ authority and briefly details the dissolution of their power.