2025 Volume 92 Issue 2 Pages 252-264
In contemporary society, various issues surrounding children―such as poverty, school non-attendance, disability, and minority ethnicity―tend to be institutionally recognized and addressed through classification into specific categories. Conversely, children whose difficulties do not fit into existing frameworks often lack institutional visibility and are less likely to emerge as targets of support. This study seeks to clarify how students enrolled solely in regular classrooms perceive, in multiple ways, students who attend in-school educational support centers but do not fall clearly into any institutional category. This paper focuses on the “X Classroom,” an in-school educational support center located in a mid-sized public elementary school. Unlike educational support centers established outside schools to support children not attending school, in-school educational support centers are designed to provide a calm and secure environment within the school for children who find it difficult to attend class in regular classrooms. These classrooms accommodate not only students with tendencies toward school non-attendance but also those who feel discomfort within regular classrooms.
Based on the case analysis of data obtained through field observation, it was found that surrounding students tended to perceive the target students through a dichotomous lens similar to that of “non-disabled-disabled,” framing them within a “support-provider-support-receiver” relationship. In doing so, they often refrained from holding the target students accountable for unreasonable words or actions. However, influenced by the physical environment and unique nature of the center, their perception sometimes shifted from “support-provider-support-receiver” to “peer-peer,” giving rise to feelings of benign envy toward the target students who were free to spend time in the center. In particular, surrounding students with a strong desire to belong to the center often experienced relative deprivation, stemming from the awareness that they themselves could not access the same freedoms enjoyed by the target students. Furthermore, depending on their own position and characteristics within the regular classroom, these surrounding students sometimes developed feelings of malicious envy toward the target students. In these cases, they attempted to self-justify their participation in regular classroom instruction by framing themselves as “superior,” categorizing the target students through a “superior-inferior” relationship. This process appeared to function as a coping mechanism to ease the cognitive dissonance and relative deprivation they experienced.
The analysis revealed that children who do not fit into clearly defined institutional categories such as “students with disabilities” or “school non-attendees” are, in practice, categorized by their peers in multiple ways―as “support-receivers,” as “peers,” or, in cases where peers sought self-justification, as “inferiors.” The membership categories to which these target students are assigned are not fixed or singular, but dynamically shaped by the surrounding studentsʼ contexts, personal attributes, desire to access the center, and affective responses. It was further revealed that these surrounding students, while resonating with the responses imposed by teachers, also developed their own diverse perceptions of the target students―perceptions not fully determined by institutional labeling, but instead arising from the interpretive frameworks shaped by their own positions and lived contexts.
