Abstract
The concept of support is being incorporated into a range of practices as changes occur in various social conditions. In the field of education, schools as a whole are being required to make efforts to provide organized support. Chapter 1 of this paper,using data from inclusion research in Kanagawa Prefecture, points out that the issues of organizations that are capable of giving support have been treated as problems of the team approach, which focuses on the coordinator as the key person,and the formation of local resource networks. At the same time it is indicated that there is a necessity to examine the problem of developing an organizational climate in which serious discussion can be held in a casual atmosphere in the teachersʼ room. In Chapter 2, regarding the latter problem, using empirical research data on “the concrete development of support” in an actual high school situation, it is shown how a “dialog frontline” consisting of “dialogs in the corridor” and on-the-fly-meetings was generated, and an organizational culture capable of providing support was formed. As such, it is described how this leads to such matters as school reform and the team approach becoming a substantive reality. In Chapter 3, an investigation regarding the significance of the “dialog frontline” was attempted within the framework of, for example, the significance of the shift in the medium of the dialog, the nature of the problem of negative definitions, the framework of knot-working, and the issue of intra-organizational barriers obstructing support. Lastly, the “dialog frontline” was positioned as a microsystem within the overall system, and it is shown that it displays its functions when supported by the mesosystem of the school organization and the macrosystem of educational administration.
