Suaugusių žmonių, turinčių fizinę negalią, asmeninės nuostatos į nuolatinį ugdymą(si)

Abstract

Over the past years, the attitude towards the disabled people in the society has been constantly changing: 2003 was announced to be the year of the Disabled. New laws are being passed to help the disabled integrate into the society and find their place in the labor market. However, not only the laws help the disabled to integrate into the society and first of all into the professional field. Nowadays economic and political situation in Lithuania is not very favorable, and it was estimated that in 2003 only 10 percent of the disabled people in Lithuania were employed. Taking into consideration that 52.2 percent of all the disabled are working-age people, this shows that unemployment within this social group reaches 78 percent. In this paper, I have been trying to show the need of disabled people with mobility problems to learn, their current possibilities of doing this, and the legal basis regulating this matter. In the changing environment, lifelong learning is becoming more and more important, but there is still too little scientific research done with regard to the disabled people. There is very little research data on the attitude of the adult disabled towards continuing learning. This data is patchy and not systematic. This is why I decided to choose and analyze this particular aspect. There are very few disabled people learning in the educational institutions for adults. In this research, it became clear that their motivation is very low and problematic. In this work the main motivations of the adults to learn were distinguished. It appeared that the main motivation for the disabled to learn has a lot in common with wish to improve their situation in the labor market. Many of them realize the growing requirements in the labor market and are seeking for better jobs. Significant motivators are those of self- development and expanding the outlook. It became evident that adult people with physical disability do not make use of all existing continuing learning opportunities, and the reasons why this happens is: inadequate learning environment, lack of money, family/ home related problems, insufficient computer skills. The disabled do not at all take the advantage of distance learning because they do not have computers and/or the Internet connection at home. There also people who lack information about the distance learning.