ABSTRACT

This study aims to promote knowledge about the reality of disability by trying to understand how people, who are confronted with this circumstance in adulthood, learn to live with it, identifying trajectories, experiences and identities related to it.

Anchored in the relational paradigm of disability - which understands it as a product of interaction between personal and contextual circumstances - this work aims to give voice to 21 adults with acquired neuromusculoskeletal disabilities, through a comprehensive qualitative methodological approach that privileges listening and analyzing narratives about this plan of their life.

The data collected allows the identification of specific types of post-disability biographical trajectories in four major areas of life, as well as diversified ways of living and identifying with this circumstance, which are influenced by multiple actors and factors, demonstrating that disability is a complex reality and with numerous facets, many of them are far away from the current tragic vision about it. More specifically, this work shows that, despite the dramatic consequences it brings and the changes that determines in the biographical trajectories, disability can also represent an opportunity for personal growth and ripness, with positive personal and social repercussions, reinforcing the conclusion that the human being is able to learn at any time, place and circumstance of life, promoting change in the contexts where it is. That is why these people tend to consider themselves included in the community they belong, namely in the restricted circles they attend, where it is possible to watch a process of “normalization” of the disability, despite the existence of a biographical transaction, sometimes tension, between the assigned identity (identity for the other) and the claimed identity (identity for you). Thus, it can be concluded that acquiring a disability implies the triggering of experiential learning processes, with significant, existential and transformative repercussions, which can and should be explored to promote a more balanced and inclusive rehabilitation of those who experience this type of situations.

Keywords: disability; adult education; learning; life trajectories; identity.