Strategies for Enhancing Youth Humanities Education : Focusing on the 'Youth Humanities Class' Case Study

The purpose of this study is to develop measures to revitalize humanities culture programs targeting adolescents by qualitatively deriving the operational effects, focusing on cases from the Youth Humanities Class project. To this end, an analysis was conducted on the project plan for the Youth Humanities Class, and the effectiveness and activation strategies for humanities programs targeting adolescents were examined through various qualitative data—including interviews with participants, project operators, and experts involved with the Youth Humanities Class project. For data collection, in-depth group interviews were conducted with operators from five regions to analyze the effectiveness of the Youth Humanities Classroom program. Additionally, 15 handwritten accounts from facility coordinators who participated in the program alongside the youth participants were analyzed. To explore enhacning measures for this program, indepth interviews were conducted with experts who operate and educate youth humanities-related programs in government agencies and academia. Data analysis involved deriving concepts from transcribed materials and categorizing them. For the areas of effectiveness and satisfaction, capacity enhancement of regional operating and demand facilities, and improvement of community humanities and cultural environment, overlapping concepts were abstracted to derive themes according to areas and content. In the case of activating measures, each expert’s opinions were analyzed in-depth to derive meaningful themes that could represent ways to revitalize the Youth Humanities Classroom program. The validity of the data analysis results was verified through peer review and triangulation. The results are as follows. Pthe study identified participants’ satisfaction and the program’s effectiveness; capacity improvements for operating and demand facilities in each region (including the discovery of youth humanities instructors, program reorganization and development, effectiveness in solving youth-related issues, enhancement of members’ professionalism, and expansion of tangible and human resources); and identified humanities education activation strategies (such as improvement measures for program operators, the necessity of humanities subjects for youth, and ways to expand the Youth Humanities Class project). Based on these results, the study suggests the need to promote humanities education at vocational high schools and to offer opportunities for students to encounter humanities both through curricular and extracurricular activities at school.