Abstract
According to the Osaka Prefectural Board of Education （1999） “Educational Reform Program,” which provides a long-term policy outlook, there were 155 prefectural full-time high schools, 29 part-time, and 1 correspondence. As this distribution suggests, correspondence courses were of low priority. It was not until the 2012 school year that a proposal for substantive restructuring and expansion of the course was made. Six years later, in 2018, a proposal to enhance the use of external specialists in the course was made, and the allocation of SSWs and the expansion of budget hours for career counselors have finally progressed.
For a long time, students with various difficulties have been enrolled in correspondence courses, and guidance and support for their careers, especially employment, has continued to be an important issue. Why has it been delayed for so long ? The study elucidates the structure of this incrementalism by contextualizing the correspondence course within the policies of Osaka Prefectural high schools since the 1990s and then conceptualizes the collaboration formed in the process as a “community of program implementation.”
