Background The text presents the opinions of women with intellectual disabilities about their lives and experiences in Polish society. The key recurring issue in the participants’ statements was health in the light of their disability and femininity. Methods For the purpose of this study, focus group interviews were conducted with 20 women with intellectual disabilities. The collected interviews were analysed with the use of constructivist grounded theory. Results During the analysis, five general thematic areas were distinguished: appearance and beauty, health and sickness, intimate relationships, friends and acquaintances, and self‐determination. Conclusions The results of this research suggest that neither womanhood nor disability, as such, are perceived by the study's participants as a burden or health problem in any of the aforementioned areas. Moreover, the participants identified sources of oppression, as well as the means of opposing them, for example cooperation, and claiming the right to self‐determination.

The purpose of this article is to show the possibility of using conductive education system and its effectiveness in working with children and young people with profound intellectual disabilities attending rehabilitation -educational groups, in order to develop and form their self-reliance, and the grounds of autonomy. In the first part of text the author described the functioning of people with profound intellectual disabilities, pointing to their specific difficulties in the field of independent functioning. Then author showed the assumptions of conductive education system with regard to the objectives set by The Ministry of Education for rehabilitation-educational classes.Using of the possibilities inherent in the monographic method, the author presented rehabilitation-educational activities with the use of conductive education method, with particular attention to the aspects of the development of autonomy of children and young people with profound intellectual disabilities. The data for analysis and description was collected through the observation (direct, participatory and indirect -by video camera) of participants of rehabilitation -educational activities (15 persons), analysis of documentation (observation sheets and individual

The article presents the scientific and research achievements of special education, with particular emphasis on the last 10 years. In the introduction, the author presents the achievements of Maria Grzegorzewska, recognized as the founder of Polish special pedagogy, and then outlines the most important research achievements of scientists - special educators from the turn of the 20th and 21st centuries. Against this background, a review of the literature was presented using one of its forms, namely the study of the scope of literature. 73 monographs developed on the basis of research conducted by the author / author, in which the title, introduction and / or table of contents searched for "special education", "disability / person with disability" and "analysis of research results". The review includes subject(s), object(s) and research approach identified in the found literature. The obtained data were referred to research and development areas outlined by Amadeusz Krause in the article entitled Theoretical and empirical problems of special pedagogy. An outline of the research areas, published in the magazine "Disability. Scientific Half-Yearly " 2009 No. 1. This study was adopted as a reference because it was published 10 years ago, and the period 2009-2019 was designated to examine the contemporary achievements of special pedagogy in order to be able to determine the directions of development of the discipline, its most important achievements, dominant tendencies in the selection of research paradigms and outline development trends for the coming years.

Edyta Zierkiewicz, Beata Cytowska, Doing and undoing gender by women with intellectual disabilities. Interdisciplinary Contexts of Special Pedagogy, no. 26, Poznań 2019. Pp. 271–293. Adam Mickiewicz University Press. ISSN 2300-391X. e-ISSN 2658-283X. DOI: https://doi.org/10.14746/ikps.2019.26.13 The aim of this article is to present socio-cultural processes of doing gender categories in women with intellectual disabilities and to identify barriers and limitations which they face on the way of „becoming women”. The study and its analysis are based on the critical approach. The method of data collection was a participant observation conducted during three proprietary workshops on femininity organized for 17 women with moderate to severe intellectual disabilities (5–6 people in a group), attending an occupational therapy workshop. The aim of our workshops was the empowerment of one’s own femininity and strengthening of processes of doing gender by the participants. The analysis of collected material revealed that the process of shaping gender identities of women with intellectual disability is a subject of social control of the local community. Participants of the workshops are well aware that they are adult women and they strive for the realization of cultural patterns of femininity. In their case, however, these patterns are socially regulated and the women themselves internalize certain limitations imposed by the society during the socialization process. They instinctively “know” what they are allowed to do, and what they cannot gain as women with intellectual disabilities.

No abstract