Chosen topics of supporting persons with a disability. vol. 4, Towards questions and answers about human well-being

Abstract

This book is another, already fourth, volume of the “Chosen topics of supporting persons with a disability” series. This time the main topic focusing the presented articles is human well-being. Posing questions about wellbeing and attempting to answer them are intended to act as an incentive for reflection on the activities undertaken in the field of special pedagogy and their multidimensional determinants. Recognizing in the well-being of individual a factor that is favourable to his or her development means that the creation of conditions conducive to wellbeing should determine the actions taken by special educators towards people with disabilities or people at risk of disability and constitute an important objective of these activities. The consideration of well-being is necessary, because it allows, for example, to verify assumptions accepted in rehabilitation activities, take into account the subjective perspective of people with disabilities, so as to create an environment conducive to positive emotion (of which happiness and life satisfaction are all aspects), engagement, relationships, meaning and purpose, and accomplishment (cf. Seligman 2011) and at the same time support people with disabilities in shaping such traits that will facilitate the attainment of well-being. The texts collected in this volume are characterized by a variety of approaches and scope of the presented explorations. They refer in a more or less direct way to the phenomenon of well-being in the area of special education, well-being of people with disabilities and people at risk of disability, as well as people who create their living space. Here, there are texts whose authors draw attention to activities undertaken in the course of life towards people with disabilities, as well as texts emphasizing the importance of a wider dimension of determinants that influence the situation of people with disabilities and, ultimately, how they will see the world and their place in it. The presented texts have been divided into two parts – the first one considers the phenomenon of well-being in the education space. The second part contains texts referring to the remaining dimensions of the human living space.