This study had auto ethnography approach to analyze the self-overcoming and growth of illiterate female learners with physical disabilities. A physical disability is a huge accident that an individual can face. When illiteracy occurs in the person, aside from that, he or she has almost negative experiences in life. The purpose of this study is to look into how to overcome personal conflicts caused by physical disabilities and recovering human dignity through the participation in literacy education. To achieve that, this researcher collected a variety of data through participation observation, in-depth interview, conversation, accompanying outside, learning instruction, recall data, and press media. After the collected data were analyzed, main categories were drawn. In this way, this study tried to suggest the implications of ‘internal conflict’, ‘relation recovery’, and ‘mission implementation’ in the course of overcoming physical disabilities through literacy education.
‘One’s feeling timid in life’ caused by physical disabilities and illiteracy means educational isolation with disabilities. Illiteracy acted as one’s psychological disability of fear and scary as much as its actual physical disability. The motivation of learning participation is to overcome both physical and psychological disabilities. Participants can grow further by experience the different feelings of hopes and despairs in the way of joining the literacy education. In the way of “overcoming physical disabilities and illiteracy”, learners found “their role to contribute to the world” beyond illiteracy and disabilities and began to grow and change by turning their experiences into a value. From the perspective of continuing education, this study is meaningful in the point that physical disabilities and illiteracy can gradually change when the opportunity of ‘self-discovery’based educational value and the role for‘fulfilling social responsibility’ is provided in one’s whole life, rather than the short-term support in physical and welfare dimensions.