This is the first of two papers that examine clinical reasoning research in occupational therapy. It discusses the reasoning studies of the 1980s and 1990s, focusing on ethnographic and process-tracing approaches. From this critique, a need for an approach that acknowledges the experienced thinker's intuitive reasoning is identified. The second paper will present such an approach, based on social judgement theory, and demonstrate the first application of such a method in the field of occupational therapy.
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