Background/Aim Professional reasoning in occupational therapy is the process used by practitioners to plan, direct, perform, and reflect on client care. The professional's ability to manage the process of the intervention is structured around it, thereby influencing the effectiveness of the work carried out. The objectives of this research were to identify and describe (a) the historical development of this area of research from 1982 to 2017 and (b) the nature and volume of the scientific literature on professional reasoning in occupational therapy and the evidence that exists today. Methods A scoping review method was used to carry out an historical mapping of research on professional reasoning and to summarise the lines of research explored to date. The review was conducted in five stages following the PRISMA guidelines. After applying the selection criteria, the search identified 303 references. Results The results are presented under three headings: (a) nature and volume of publications on professional reasoning in occupational therapy according to number and year of publications, journal, country, author, and line of research; (b) historical trends in the scientific literature on professional reasoning in occupational therapy since 1982; and (c) methodological aspects of the research. Each of them is discussed through statistical analysis. Conclusions The research about professional reasoning in occupational therapy is a field of empirical nature, in which qualitative studies predominate. Principal lines of research are focused on specific fields of practice, undergraduates, and theoretical aspects of professional reasoning. There were identified three historical phases with common features in terms of objectives and research methods.

Background Professional reasoning provides a firm basis for the development of teaching and assessment strategies to support the acquisition of skills by healthcare students. Nevertheless, occupational therapy educators should use diverse methods of learning assessment to examine student learning outcomes more fully with an evaluation that supports the overall complexity of the process, particularly learners’ subjective experience. The aim of this article is to identify the range of perspectives among occupational therapy undergraduates regarding terms or concepts that are key for improving their professional reasoning. Methods Q-methodology was used to address the aim of the study. A concourse relating to a series of ideas, phrases, terminology, and concepts associated with various studies on professional reasoning in occupational therapy, specifically on students in this field, was generated. The terms that had the clearest evidence, the most relevance or the greatest number of citations in the literature were collected (n = 37). The P-set was assembled by non-probabilistic sampling for convenience. It comprised undergraduate university students in occupational therapy. Factor analysis was conducted using Ken-Q Analysis v.1.0.6, reducing the number of Q-sets to smaller groups of factors representing a common perspective. Results Through statistical analysis of the Q-sorts of 37 occupational therapy students, 8 default factors were identified. The four factors in accordance with the selection criteria were rotated by varimax rotation to identify variables that could be grouped together. Each viewpoint was interpreted, discussed and liked to different aspects of professional reasoning in occupational therapy. Conclusions The observed perceptions were linked to the various aspects of professional reasoning that have been widely discussed in the occupational therapy literature. For most of the students, there was a strong correspondence between the narrative, interactive and conditional aspects of the various components.