2024 Volume 21 Pages 193-217
Since its establishment in 2012, the After-School Day Service has continued to expand in scale, increasing its social presence and demand, but the reality faced by supporters in the field has not been fully captured. The focus of this paper is on an office that claims to provide behavioral therapy-like developmen- tal support, and through the description and analysis of the narratives, clarifies the logics of support in the meaning-world of the supporters. First, in the meaning-world of the supporters, it was clarified that “support for the purpose of transformation of the child” is not only a logic of support that aims at “overcoming a specific defect.” A logic of support has also been estab- lished that places the problem on a different dimension from the defect itself and is oriented toward “alternative development” that is not a direct overcom- ing of the defect. A further logic of support oriented toward “transformation to become self-affirming,” including the child affirming his or her own current de- fects, by lowering the need to become better than what they are now has also been established. Also clarified in this paper is a logic of support that does not aim at transformation of the child, but aims at “acceptance of the child as he or she is,” and a logic of support that aims at “maintaining the child's merit” by viewing characteristics that could be considered shortcomings in a positive light. It was then revealed that there are multiple logics of support that are not lim- ited to the view of support generally expected as developmental support. These are apparently conflicting views of support regarding transformation of the child, but they form a multi-layered logical structure in the meaning-world of the supporters, and thereby coexist.
