Catholic Formation in the Higher Education Curriculum: An Integrative Framework and Documentary Analysis of The Catholic University of Korea

Abstract

Catholic universities bring intellectual inquiry, service, and reflective practice into a shared formative mission. Explaining how these activities inform one another remains a curricular challenge. This article develops Knowing–Serving–Contemplating–Integrating (KSCI) through a selective interpretation of Ex Corde Ecclesiae and a critical synthesis of educational scholarship. A documentary analysis of the Catholic University of Korea combines public curriculum sources with an institutional report covering eight semesters of Sharing Love and engages a published qualitative study of monastic experience. The analysis identifies recommended sequencing, embedded experiences, sustained service provision, and reported opportunities for reflection and personal meaning. These findings establish an educational basis for investigating reciprocal learning across activities. KSCI contributes criteria for examining whether concepts, encounters, and reflective judgement inform and revise one another. The discussion translates those criteria into connected assessment, respect for conscience, and community participation in judging service. The article offers an evidence-informed conceptual contribution and an evaluable research agenda.

1. Introduction

The normative vision of Catholic higher education connects intellectual inquiry with the development of the whole person. Ex Corde Ecclesiae relates the pursuit of truth to moral, social, and religious development (John Paul II 1990, paras. 20–23), while Almandoz and Rey identify the broadening of reason and the pursuit of wisdom as dimensions of institutional purpose (Almandoz and Rey 2024). Yet a commitment to integral education does not by itself explain how courses, service requirements, and reflective experiences should relate. Ormerod’s account of institutional pressures makes this translation a substantive problem for Catholic universities (Ormerod 2013). Ex Corde Ecclesiae is the principal magisterial text interpreted here because the inquiry concerns the institutional and curricular responsibilities of a Catholic university. The present article asks what distinguishes the coexistence of formative activities from a curriculum that explicitly connects them.

The inquiry distinguishes institutional purpose, curricular provision, student experience, and integration across learning activities. Each addresses a different educational question. A service course may be well received, and a reflective experience may be personally meaningful, while their relationship to intellectual judgement remains to be examined. That relationship matters because integral formation involves how students interpret and act on what they learn across settings. The present study brings component-level evidence into dialogue with a framework designed to make those relationships visible and assessable.

The article develops Knowing–Serving–Contemplating–Integrating (KSCI) through a critical synthesis of scholarship and a selective interpretation of Ex Corde Ecclesiae (Section 2 and Section 3). It then examines CUK’s curricular arrangements alongside institutional monitoring and published qualitative findings (Section 4) and derives educational implications and a follow-up research design (Section 5). KSCI is the author’s synthesis, and its analytical value lies in identifying relationships that course classifications and satisfaction indicators alone leave unspecified, including how service challenges a concept, how reflection changes its interpretation, and how revised judgement informs subsequent action.

Three research questions organise the study. RQ1: How are intellectual inquiry, service, and reflective practice located and connected in the reviewed CUK curriculum? RQ2: What do the institutional monitoring report and published qualitative research contribute to understanding participation and experience within these activities? RQ3: Which reciprocal learning relationships warrant explicit curricular design and subsequent evaluation? Section 4.1 and Section 4.2 address curricular arrangements, Section 4.3 and Section 4.4 examine the additional evidence, and Section 4.5 synthesises the findings. Section 5 translates that synthesis into assessable design propositions. This design connects the conceptual contribution to available evidence and to the effectiveness question that a subsequent intervention study would address.

CUK provides a relevant setting because its published general-education documents place human studies, Christian Thought and Culture, and Sharing Love within a common institutional programme, while locating the monastic experience within Christian Thought and Culture (Catholic University of Korea 2026a, 2026c; Catholic College, The Catholic University of Korea n.d.-a, n.d.-c). These arrangements make the relationship between differentiated activities and an integrative educational purpose accessible to examination.

1.1. Research Design, Sources, and Analytical Procedure

The study combines conceptual synthesis with documentary analysis. Following Jaakkola’s (2020) emphasis on explicating the role of theories in conceptual research, Ex Corde Ecclesiae supplies the theological rationale, scholarship on service-learning and contemplative pedagogy supplies educational mechanisms and objections, and KSCI organises the resulting relational propositions. The literature is selected for these argumentative roles; it is a focused synthesis rather than an exhaustive systematic review. Institutional documents provide a distinct source of evidence about curricular arrangements and reported experience, consistent with the use of documents as research material discussed by Bowen (2009).

The institutional corpus contains seven sources: the 2026 core-curriculum page; the ELP+ curriculum, educational-goals, and Sharing Love pages; the notice for the 2026 second-semester monastic experience; the 2026 second-semester Sharing Love notice; and the Catholic College’s winter-workshop report dated 23 February 2026 (Catholic University of Korea 2026a, 2026b, 2026c; Catholic College, The Catholic University of Korea 2026, n.d.-a, n.d.-b, n.d.-c). The first five public sources retain their original access date of 21 September 2026; the additional Sharing Love notice was consulted on 20 October 2026. The workshop report extends the evidence to aggregate completion and survey indicators for 2022–2025 and to operational records and plans for 2026. Jeung and Kim’s (2026) published qualitative study is considered separately as research on students’ monastic experience. Its findings are interpreted as published scholarship, without reanalysing its participant-level data.

CUK is selected because the activities of interest share a documented curricular setting and because the additional sources illuminate their educational experience. The documentary reading identifies each source’s date, institutional purpose, relevant cohort or period, stated requirements, explicit connections, and type of experiential evidence. Overlapping descriptions are compared; numerical entries in the workshop report are transcribed with their original reporting labels; and qualitative findings are considered alongside the published study’s sampling and follow-up. Analysis then separates source statements from KSCI interpretation and from proposed curricular changes.

1.2. Korean Historical and Institutional Context

The Korean setting requires a historical account rather than a generic reference to competitive higher education. Kim distinguishes state-led expansion and developmental priorities from the stronger market and international-competition pressures associated with reforms from the mid-1990s. His account places the development of Catholic higher education within post-liberation reconstruction, transnational missionary networks, and later changes towards diocesan leadership (Kim 2025, pp. 2, 5–7). This history makes the relationship between academic provision and ecclesial responsibility an institutional question as well as a theological one.

The resulting landscape is internally differentiated. Kim distinguishes the position of CUK and Sogang from more immediate survival pressures facing provincial institutions and interprets mission–competitiveness tensions as potentially productive rather than necessarily evidence of failure (Kim 2025, pp. 9–12). Gu and Kim’s examination of Yonsei and Dongguk locates religious mission within general-education arrangements in Protestant and Buddhist settings (Gu and Kim 2024, pp. 1–5). Their cases supply a comparison, not direct evidence about Catholic formation. Together, these studies caution against treating national competition, religious affiliation, or mandatory provision as sufficient explanations of a particular university’s curriculum.

These studies locate the present inquiry within an established examination of religious mission and institutional practice. Kim combines documentary sources with fifteen interviews across three Catholic universities (Kim 2025, p. 5), while Gu and Kim give course-level detail for Protestant and Buddhist settings (Gu and Kim 2024, pp. 3–5). The contribution developed here concerns the relationship between curricular correspondence, reported component experiences, and reciprocal integration. Bringing CUK’s operational reporting and monastic-experience research into the analysis makes that question empirically informed and educationally specific.

2. Domains of Formation and Their Relationships

2.1. Knowing: The Intellectual Foundation and Christian Anthropology

Catholic formation is used here as a working theological and educational concept: the cultivation of intellectual judgement, practical responsibility, and reflective discernment within a Catholic understanding of the person’s relation to God, other persons, and the common good. This definition concerns the orientation of education, not a measurable state that follows automatically from completing prescribed activities. Its Catholic character lies in that theological horizon and ecclesial setting; it is not established by the mere presence of religious course titles. Ex Corde Ecclesiae links institutional Christian inspiration with service to the human family and identifies the person and message of Christ as the community’s distinctive source of unity (John Paul II 1990, paras. 13, 21). The proposed definition interprets those commitments for curricular analysis.

The philosophical justification for integration concerns the relationship between distinct forms of understanding, rather than the absorption of all inquiry into theology. Ex Corde Ecclesiae preserves the methods of individual disciplines while connecting knowledge, ethical judgement, and theological reflection; paragraph 20 explicitly extends the preceding account of research to teaching (John Paul II 1990, paras. 15–20). This supplies a normative rationale for examining connections across learning activities. A further philosophical resource is the argument that Catholic identity cannot be treated as a subjective supplement to an otherwise neutral institutional structure. Gourlay develops this through a relational ontology and a metaphysics of gift, while defending the integrity of disciplines within their relationships (Gourlay 2023, pp. 250, 262–63).

A relational account also requires precision about the subject and limits of formation. Whole-person formation gives a broader Christian vocabulary for relating intellectual, moral, and spiritual development (Chandler 2015); Catholic educational discussions further connect anthropology and curriculum (James 2023; Rizzi 2019; Davis and Franchi 2021). These sources address different educational settings and levels of analysis. KSCI focuses on curricular relationships within the wider horizon of Catholic formation, which includes ecclesial, liturgical, sacramental, and vocational dimensions.

The proposed integration follows a practical argument. If the educational aim concerns a person’s judgement and action in relation to others, intellectual understanding requires opportunities for responsible application; action requires critical interpretation; and reflection requires accountability to knowledge and to the persons affected. KSCI makes reciprocal scrutiny explicit across curricular settings, including reflective practice within disciplinary teaching and service-learning.

Freedom of conscience belongs within this theological justification. Ex Corde Ecclesiae’s General Norms place the influence of Catholic teaching alongside full respect for each person’s conscience (John Paul II 1990, General Norms, art. 2, §4). Accordingly, this article distinguishes education informed by Catholic commitments from a requirement that every student profess those commitments. Academic engagement with Christian thought, participation in an assessed activity, and personal religious assent are different matters. The normative implication proposed here is that curricular integration should preserve opportunities for critical engagement and appropriate alternatives; compliance with course requirements cannot be treated as evidence of faith or personal appropriation.

2.2. Serving: From Charity to Solidarity and Its Institutional Risks

Service-learning is theorised in the literature as a practical corrective to detached intellectualism, functioning as a mechanism to integrate faith, academic inquiry, and justice. Wodon argues that service-learning offers Catholic universities a means to strengthen their Catholic identity in a way that respects pluralism, and notes that survey data from the United States indicates a higher aspiration for community service among students at Catholic institutions compared to others (Wodon 2022). This service orientation finds normative grounding in Ex Corde Ecclesiae’s statement that “the basic mission of a University is a continuous quest for truth through its research, and the preservation and communication of knowledge for the good of society” (John Paul II 1990, para. 30). This integration is conceptualised not merely as volunteerism, but as a structured movement from charity-based models toward genuine solidarity and reciprocal engagement (Tian and Noel 2020). Sokol et al. argue that the civic mission of Catholic universities requires this justice-oriented education (Sokol et al. 2021), while Kaak and LaPorte propose a faith-informed model where experiential learning bridges the gap between classroom theory and societal reality (Kaak and LaPorte 2022). The “Serving” dimension thus promises to ground intellectual formation in the lived experience of the marginalised. The critical literature also raises questions about whether formal service requirements realise that proposed educational purpose.

Within the proposed account, service becomes a source of learning when students can question their initial interpretations in light of encounters and community perspectives. For example, a partner’s account of an unmet need could challenge a student’s interpretation of what responsible service requires. Whether that challenge enters teaching depends on opportunities for feedback and reconsideration. The relevant question is therefore how community knowledge can affect academic judgement, rather than whether a service requirement is present. The risks discussed below show that the quality and terms of that participation are themselves open to criticism.

Existing initiatives show that the institutionalisation of service-learning is already an established concern in Catholic higher education. UNISERVITATE, a Porticus initiative coordinated by CLAYSS, describes a global programme that links the institutionalisation of service-learning in Catholic higher education with attention to its spiritual dimension (Uniservitate n.d.). Wodon’s account of survey findings for the UNISERVITATE collaborative distinguishes the presence of service activities from their degree of institutional integration and cautions against assuming educational effectiveness (Wodon 2022, pp. 13–14). Building on these contributions, the present analysis specifies reciprocal relationships among forms of learning in CUK’s curricular setting.

The institutionalisation of mandatory service-learning introduces significant risks of instrumentalisation and the reproduction of unequal power dynamics. McCarty provides a critical counterargument, warning that service-learning often reinforces the privilege of the students rather than challenging the structural injustices faced by the communities they serve (McCarty 2024). Similarly, Cuban and Anderson’s study of a Jesuit university demonstrates that institutionalising service-learning from a social justice perspective creates deep tensions between market-driven accountability pressures and the programme’s transformative goals (Cuban and Anderson 2007). Hagues further complicates the narrative by arguing that without an explicitly anti-oppressive framework, service-learning defaults to a charity model that fails to advance genuine solidarity (Hagues 2024). These critical perspectives do not dismiss the value of service, but they specify a crucial boundary condition: serving corrects intellectualism only when it is structured to require critical reflection and reciprocity, rather than operating as a managed institutional requirement.

Tian and Noel discuss intentional pedagogical design, and Kaak and LaPorte connect experience with processes of learning and interpretation (Tian and Noel 2020; Kaak and LaPorte 2022). Such work supports examining the forms of reflection through which students interpret service. The next section considers the contribution of contemplation to that process within Catholic formation.

A demanding test of integration is whether reflection permits service experiences to challenge the concepts and assumptions brought to them. A report that merely records attendance or affirms institutional values would not, on the proposed criteria, establish that relationship. Conversely, critical reflection embedded in a service course might connect knowing and serving without requiring a separate contemplative setting.

2.3. Contemplating: Discernment, Self-Awareness, and Epistemological Boundaries

Contemplative pedagogy offers resources for relating intellectual learning to personal meaning and practical experience across diverse traditions. Zajonc describes practices across academic disciplines and draws on diverse contemplative traditions, including mindfulness and lectio divina (Zajonc 2013, pp. 83–87). Aligning well with the Ignatian tradition of discernment, one Catholic strand connects reflective attention with moral purpose and service to others (Muldoon 2022). Chien discusses connections between Ignatian pedagogy and contemplative practices within this broader field (Chien 2020). Within the present article’s theological scope, Ex Corde Ecclesiae relates contemplation to understanding, personal judgement, and religious, moral, and social development (John Paul II 1990, para. 23). This provides a Catholic rationale for attending to reflection while preserving the theological distinctions among contemplative traditions. Claims about the epistemological superiority of contemplative experience nevertheless require critical scrutiny.

Fisher provides a robust counterargument to the more expansive claims of contemplative pedagogy, challenging the assertion that first-person contemplative experience is inherently superior to third-person analytical knowledge. Fisher critiques the tendency among some advocates to dismiss analytical reasoning as a “myth of objectivity,” arguing instead that third-person knowledge is often the necessary product of prior direct experience and remains vital for critical thinking (Fisher 2017). Furthermore, she warns that contemplative practices risk transgressing the boundaries between academic instruction and psychological or religious therapy. This critique sets a clear limit: contemplating cannot substitute for intellectual formation. If contemplative practice attempts to replace analytical inquiry rather than complement it, it risks devolving into mere subjectivism.

For this framework, the proposed contribution of contemplating is attention to how a learner perceives an encounter and to the purposes or assumptions brought to it. Knowing concerns the examination of concepts and reasons, while contemplating draws attention to the standpoint from which that examination begins. These functions may overlap in one task; they do not require separate courses or a devotional exercise. This distinction directs attention to how learners’ purposes and assumptions shape their interpretation of service.

This breadth also matters for a religiously diverse student body. The educational task could invite careful attention to an experience, examination of one’s assumptions, and reasoned reflection without requiring every student to undertake a devotional practice. Describing an exercise as secular does not by itself remove questions about participation, discomfort, or the disclosure of private experience. The distinction between assessable academic engagement and personal religious assent therefore remains necessary; Section 5.2 develops its practical implications.

These competing positions frame contemplating as a resource for attention and discernment within learning. The proposed relationship is reciprocal: reflective insight should remain answerable to reasons and to practical consequences, while inquiry and service may raise questions for personal discernment.

2.4. The Analytical Problem: From Coexistence to Integration

Existing scholarship provides substantial resources for integration. Whole-person formation connects dimensions of personal development (Chandler 2015); integral-purpose scholarship explains the institutional orientation of Catholic education (Almandoz and Rey 2024); faith-informed experiential learning relates experience to interpretation (Kaak and LaPorte 2022); and contemplative and Ignatian pedagogies offer ways of attending to experience within teaching (Chien 2020). Wodon (2022) addresses service-learning within Catholic higher education and its institutionalisation. KSCI builds on these contributions by making reciprocal relationships across curricular settings the unit of analysis. Its distinctive question is how a concept, a service encounter, and reflective judgement become answerable to one another in identifiable learning tasks.

This question becomes especially useful when evidence already supports the educational relevance of individual activities. CUK’s institutional indicators and published monastic-experience study provide such a starting point, as Section 4.3 and Section 4.4 show. They direct attention to the next analytical task: specifying how learning within one activity enters and potentially revises learning in another. KSCI contributes a vocabulary and criteria for that task. Its value can be assessed through the clarity of the relationships it identifies, the curricular decisions it informs, and the research questions it makes testable.

3. The KSCI Framework: Analytical Principles

The KSCI framework organises the preceding argument around three domains and the relationships among them. Knowing concerns reasoned understanding; Serving concerns engagement with others and practical responsibility; contemplating concerns reflective attention and discernment. Integrating names the proposed reciprocal relationships among these domains, rather than a fourth course or a final stage. This synthesis draws on accounts of integral purpose, whole-person formation, justice-oriented education, and discernment (Almandoz and Rey 2024; Chandler 2015; Sokol et al. 2021; Muldoon 2022). Ex Corde Ecclesiae provides a normative rationale for relating forms of learning (John Paul II 1990, paras. 15–20).

For curricular analysis, explicit tasks and feedback would make these relationships easier to identify and examine. Deliberate coordination is one possible means of supporting them; students may also make connections within a single course or without a separately prescribed integrative activity. KSCI directs attention to the content of these relationships and to the evidence needed to assess them.

Three corrective relationships are proposed. Knowing can supply concepts and critical questions with which to examine service and reflective experience. Serving can expose the limits of those concepts through encounters with needs, unequal relationships, and community perspectives; critiques of service-learning make this corrective especially important (McCarty 2024). Contemplating can create occasions to examine purposes and assumptions, but cannot displace analytical argument or professional boundaries, as Fisher’s criticism makes clear (Fisher 2017).

Three questions guide the application of the framework. First, where does integration already occur through disciplinary or service-learning practices? Second, what educational value does additional coordination offer relative to its demands? Third, how do students’ and community partners’ interpretations inform curricular judgement? These questions focus KSCI on specific learning relationships and tensions and guide its refinement.

The institutional reading distinguishes stated aims, curricular components, organisational connections, reported experiences, and evidence of reciprocal learning. A course description identifies provision; recommended sequencing and an embedded activity identify organisational connections; and institutional survey indicators and qualitative accounts illuminate particular experiences. A stronger claim about integration requires evidence that learners use concepts to interpret encounters, examine assumptions through reflection, and carry reasoned revisions into subsequent judgement or action. These distinctions allow evidence of educational value to inform the analysis while giving the integration question a specific object.

Integration is therefore examined through concrete questions: does a document explicitly connect activities, identify how students revisit concepts through experience, or specify assessment of that connection? Equally important is whether the documents permit rival readings, such as logistical coordination rather than pedagogical reciprocity. Absence of a statement from the reviewed sources is recorded as an evidentiary limit, not as proof that the institution lacks the practice.

4. Documentary Analysis and Evidence from Existing Educational Activities

4.1. Curriculum Structure and Documented Connections

The CUK material permits an analysis of curricular arrangements and reported component experiences within the historical and institutional setting outlined above. Public documents describe requirements and connections; the workshop report records operation and aggregate indicators; and published qualitative research examines meanings attributed to monastic experience. These sources concern different periods and populations. Their combination supports an evidence-informed interpretation of existing provision, with attribution and temporal distinctions maintained throughout.

The institution’s categories provide a point of comparison for KSCI. The ELP+ document places Human Studies 1–2 in a human-studies stream and places Christian Thought and Culture together with Sharing Love in a spirituality stream (Catholic College, The Catholic University of Korea n.d.-a). KSCI thus divides and regroups activities that the university classifies differently. This comparison distinguishes KSCI’s relational interpretation from the institution’s curricular classification. The broader educational-goals document also includes employment, problem-solving, and international competitiveness, situating the three domains examined here within a wider set of institutional aims (Catholic College, The Catholic University of Korea n.d.-b). The ELP+ page presents its requirements in cohort-specific tables.

The 2026 core-curriculum document lists Human Studies 1–2, Christian Thought and Culture, and Sharing Love for specified departments, but the requirements are not uniform across every programme and student category (Catholic University of Korea 2026c). For example, the displayed Global Business College row does not list Sharing Love, and a separate note specifies Western Thought and Culture as a replacement for Christian Thought and Culture for international students from 2026. The document also recommends taking Sharing Love after Human Studies 1–2. That recommendation provides a documented sequencing link for examining how concepts inform service.

Sharing Love supplies a concrete setting for examining these relationships. The 2026 core-curriculum page specifies four hours of theory education and 36 h of service, with a Pass/Fail assessment (Catholic University of Korea 2026c). The course page describes instructor consultation, mid-term and final reports, and assessment by the service organisation (Catholic College, The Catholic University of Korea n.d.-c). The dated second-semester notice also specifies orientation and meeting arrangements and report submission (Catholic University of Korea 2026b).

Recommended prior study, written reports, and organisational assessment establish practical points at which learning can be connected. The workshop report additionally records students’ responses to opportunities for sharing and organising service experiences (Section 4.3). Taken together, the sources support examining Sharing Love as a setting for structured reflection and feedback. The remaining integration question concerns the content of those connections: how reports use concepts from prior courses, how community feedback enters judgement, and how reflection informs subsequent action.

4.2. The Embedded Monastic Experience

The 2026 second-semester notice embeds a one-night, two-day monastic experience in Christian Thought and Culture, replacing the course’s second-week teaching (Catholic University of Korea 2026a). The winter-workshop report also includes first-semester planning for monastic experience, an online post-experience survey, and reflective writing at the instructor’s discretion (Catholic College, The Catholic University of Korea 2026, pp. 3–4). These plans identify intended opportunities for educational reflection. Published qualitative research supplies a further account of what participants made of a monastic experience (Jeung and Kim 2026), examined in Section 4.4. The course placement and experiential findings together give the contemplative mapping substantive educational content.

The published requirements also complicate an account of uniform religious participation. The core-curriculum page retains a note about pilgrimage for international students while also specifying a replacement course for international students from 2026 (Catholic University of Korea 2026c). How these two provisions apply across cohorts is not clarified on the page. These provisions concern a student category defined by international status; they do not by themselves establish an accommodation policy for every non-Catholic student. The appropriate question is which requirements and alternatives apply to which students.

4.3. Multi-Semester Evidence from Sharing Love

The winter-workshop report presents completion rates and five satisfaction-survey indicators for eight semesters, from the first semester of 2022 to the second semester of 2025 (Catholic College, The Catholic University of Korea 2026, pp. 8–9). Completion rates range from 83.9% to 89.1%, with a report-stated average of 86.5%. The survey addresses service preparation, sharing and organising experience in a meeting, host-organisation management, a sense of meaning or reward in service, and a perceived positive influence on awareness of service. Table 1 preserves the report’s percentage-form presentation and summarises the observed semester ranges and reported averages.

Table 1. Sharing Love course completion and satisfaction-survey indicators for eight semesters in 2022–2025.

Reported Indicator	2022–2025 Semester Range (%)	Report-Stated Average (%)
Course completion rate	83.9–89.1	86.5
Learning basic attitudes for service through orientation	85.1–91.6	88.0
Sharing and organising service experience through the meeting	83.1–89.6	86.2
Sense of meaning or reward in service	87.2–93.1	90.6
Perceived positive influence on awareness of service	82.5–89.0	85.8

Note: Source: Catholic College, The Catholic University of Korea (2026, pp. 8–9); item labels translated and condensed from Korean. The first row reports course completion; the remaining five rows present satisfaction-survey indicators reflecting students’ self-reported evaluations rather than direct measures of learning outcomes. Ranges are the minimum and maximum of the eight displayed semester values. Averages reproduce the source and are not recalculated or pooled.

The report gives the analysis a multi-year operational basis. Across all eight semesters, it records completion and indicators concerning experiences relevant to learning through service. In particular, the meeting item addresses students’ opportunities to organise and share what they experienced, making reflection an identifiable feature of course reporting. The items on meaningful service and awareness identify further experiences that connected assessment can investigate. Their educational significance is that service provision already includes resources for interpretation and discussion; the next question concerns the content, quality, and subsequent use of that learning.

The eight semester entries describe successive reporting periods rather than linked observations of the same students. They support a description of recurring provision and reported experience over four academic years, while the proposed KSCI relationships concern how individual learning develops across activities. Investigating those relationships requires linked work and participant accounts, with survey measurement documented prospectively. This distinction turns the existing monitoring into a starting point for an outcome-focused research design.

4.4. Published Qualitative Evidence on Monastic Experience

Jeung and Kim’s (2026) constructivist grounded-theory study examines the spiritual significance of a monastic experience for university students. From a programme involving 89 participants, 32 students consented to research participation; the analysis selected 20 reflective essays through purposive and theoretical sampling and included follow-up interviews with three of these students approximately six weeks later. The analysed essay sample comprised fifteen nonreligious students, three Protestants, and two Catholics (Jeung and Kim 2026, pp. 148–56). This sampling description locates the findings as an intensive qualitative account of selected experiences.

The study identifies meanings concerning an unfamiliar setting, emotional release and play, initial spiritual experience, self-care and reflection, relationships and dialogue, and reflection on future or vocational directions. Its core interpretation concerns setting aside the social self, encountering the inner self, and reaching reflection through dialogue with others (Jeung and Kim 2026, pp. 156–71). These findings make the contemplative dimension educationally concrete: participants describe attention to their lives, relationships, and purposes. They also show why the experience should be examined as a combination of setting, dialogue, play, religious practices, and reflection, rather than attributing every reported benefit to one mechanism.

One Catholic participant’s follow-up account connected the experience with subsequent Sunday-school service (Jeung and Kim 2026, p. 168). This is a specific example of a perceived relationship between reflection and later action, and it suggests a pathway that future research could investigate. The published study also discusses its single-programme setting, short follow-up, and the influence associated with the researcher’s teaching role (Jeung and Kim 2026, p. 172). Its contribution here is therefore a set of empirically described meanings and a candidate relationship between reflection and action.

4.5. Synthesis Through KSCI

The combined evidence yields three findings. First, the curriculum contains identifiable components and organisational connections, including recommended sequencing and an embedded experience. Second, the institutional report documents recurring service provision and reports indicators concerning preparation, reflective sharing, service meaning, and perceived awareness; the qualitative study describes reflective and relational meanings associated with monastic experience. Third, the relationship between these component experiences and reciprocal learning across courses remains the productive focus for design and evaluation. Table 2 organises the evidence around that relational question. KSCI thereby connects existing educational resources to a specified inquiry into integration.

Table 2. Documented practices and findings at CUK: Relational questions identified through KSCI.

KSCI Focus	Documented Practices and Findings	Relational Question
Knowing	Human Studies and Christian Thought and Culture; recommended prior study for Sharing Love.	How do students use and reconsider concepts in interpreting an encounter?
Serving	Recurring completion and service-experience indicators; reports, meetings, and organisational assessment.	How do experience and partner feedback qualify initial judgements?
Contemplating	Embedded monastic experience; published accounts of self-reflection, relationships, and purpose.	How does attention to assumptions inform interpretation and subsequent action?
Integrating	Sequencing and shared curricular settings; a published individual account connecting reflection and later service.	Which reciprocal connections occur across activities, and what does deliberate coordination add?

Note: Author’s synthesis of institutional documents and published research (Catholic College, The Catholic University of Korea 2026, n.d.-a, n.d.-b, n.d.-c; Catholic University of Korea 2026a, 2026b, 2026c; Jeung and Kim 2026). KSCI is an analytical framework. The synthesis brings together sources from different cohorts and periods. Each mapping identifies an educational relationship to examine.

Two explanations guide further inquiry. Students may already connect concepts, service, and reflection through existing teaching or their own initiative. Alternatively, valued component experiences may remain largely separate despite organisational coordination. The present evidence gives grounds for investigating both possibilities. Linked assignments, student accounts across time, and partner feedback can establish where integration already occurs and whether additional coordination contributes educational value. This approach recognises current provision as a resource for inquiry.

Required participation also calls for attention to differences in interpretation. The predominantly nonreligious sample in Jeung and Kim’s (2026) study offers relevant accounts of meaning-making. Those accounts invite examination of how different students engage with common activities. Scholarship on accommodation and interworldview engagement further directs attention to equitable options, belonging, and informed disagreement (Maples et al. 2021; Hudson et al. 2021). The educational aim is to make critical engagement accessible while distinguishing assessed learning from personal religious assent.

The design implications follow from the evidence. The institutional report identifies an existing meeting for organising service experience; the qualitative study identifies reflection on self, relationships, and future action; and the curriculum specifies opportunities for sequencing. Section 5 connects these resources through shared inquiry and assessment, includes students and partners in judging their value, and specifies how a subsequent study can test the added contribution of deliberate integration.

5. Discussion and a Research Agenda for Curricular Integration

The contribution of KSCI is to translate a Catholic account of integral formation into relationships that teaching and research can examine. The evidence in Section 4 supplies resources for that translation: sustained service provision, opportunities for reflective sharing, and qualitative accounts of personal and relational meaning. The proposals below connect those resources through specific learning tasks and evaluation criteria. Section 5.4 sets out a follow-up design to evaluate their implementation and educational effects.

5.1. Connecting Assessment Across Activities

The recommended sequence from Human Studies 1–2 to Sharing Love, existing service reports, and a meeting for sharing experience provide a practical basis for connected assessment (Catholic University of Korea 2026b, 2026c; Catholic College, The Catholic University of Korea 2026, p. 9; n.d.-c). One task could ask students to articulate an account of human dignity in prior study, examine a service encounter and partner feedback in its light, and reconsider the initial judgement through reasoned reflection. Where relevant, students could also draw on reflective work associated with Christian Thought and Culture. The mechanism proposed is repeated examination of a concept across settings, with each encounter able to qualify the initial understanding.

A shared rubric could make the proposed relationship inspectable by assessing conceptual accuracy, engagement with a concrete encounter, consideration of counterevidence, and the quality of the revised judgement. The rubric should reward justified disagreement and a well-supported decision not to revise, rather than reward a scripted narrative of transformation. Formulaic references to course concepts would count against the claim of substantive integration. Coordinating an existing assignment across courses would be preferable to adding requirements unless the additional work had a clear educational justification.

5.2. Protecting Conscience Within Required Learning

Compulsory academic study and personal religious assent require different educational treatment. Ex Corde Ecclesiae places the influence of Catholic teaching alongside respect for each person’s conscience (John Paul II 1990, General Norms, art. 2, §4). The proposed response is to state assessable academic purposes in advance and evaluate reasoned engagement with Catholic ideas, including informed disagreement, rather than declarations of faith. Contemplative experience should not be treated as a substitute for critical reasoning or turned into an unqualified therapeutic claim (Fisher 2017). Reflection could instead examine the interpretation and educational significance of an activity without requiring disclosure of private prayer, belief, or spiritual experience.

Where an activity would require religious observance rather than academic examination, an academically comparable route could pursue the specified learning aim through analysis of religious practice and critical reflection without requiring that observance. Its availability and assessment criteria would need to be clear in advance and avoid penalising students for taking it. The reviewed documents do not indicate whether current international-student provisions extend to other non-Catholic students. A genuine difficulty remains: alternatives may be experienced as inferior, may require additional resources, or may weaken an intended shared experience. Evidence of stigma, unequal workload, or pressure to profess belief would require revision of the arrangement rather than being dismissed as resistance to formation.

5.3. Sharing Judgement and Testing Feasibility

Integration should remain answerable to those affected by service. The course page identifies organisation-level assessment, and the workshop report records twenty partner-site visits completed between 8 and 28 January 2026 for operational checks and the collection of opinions (Catholic College, The Catholic University of Korea 2026, p. 8; n.d.-c). These provide an institutional basis for extending feedback into educational judgement. Partners could help define a feasible task and comment on its usefulness, burdens, and unintended consequences; students would use that feedback to examine their interpretations. The reported visits document contact with partners, while participatory goal-setting and influence over curricular decisions remain specific development tasks. Students’ positive accounts and partners’ judgements should both inform evaluation.

Feasibility depends on proportionate demands. Planning and feedback should match a partner’s capacity, and instructors need time and responsibility for coordinating assessment and responding to concerns. Kim’s account of differentiated institutional pressures makes resources and incentives part of the educational question (Kim 2025, pp. 9–12). A pilot built around existing reports and meetings offers a practical way to examine these demands before expansion. It would record staff and partner time, student workload, participation, and requests for change, so that decisions about continuation draw on educational value and the conditions needed to sustain it.

In the Korean context, this approach gives institutional mission practical content without assuming uniform resources or student pathways. Coordination can be adapted to the programmes and cohorts for which the relevant courses are required. The existing variation in requirements is therefore a design consideration and a possible source of comparison, provided differences between participating groups are explicitly addressed.

5.4. From Feasibility to a One- to Two-Year Comparative Follow-Up

The first stage would establish whether connected tasks can be delivered and assessed; the second would examine their added educational value and persistence. The central question is whether deliberate connections improve students’ reasoned use of concepts, encounters, and reflection beyond the learning supported by existing course arrangements. Satisfaction and completion would remain useful indicators of experience and participation, alongside direct assessment of learning and community judgements.

Preparation would bring together syllabi, assignment prompts, cohort requirements, and the documentation underlying existing survey indicators. For future survey use, the protocol would specify item wording, response options, scoring, eligible population, respondent numbers, response rates, and missing-data procedures. Instructors and partners would agree on a feasible task, feedback arrangements, and workload. Research consent would be separated from course participation and assessment, with recruitment arrangements that reduce pressure associated with the instructor’s grading role. Institutional permissions and applicable ethics procedures would precede research use of student work and interviews.

The feasibility stage would involve one semester of Sharing Love among consenting students with relevant prior coursework, subject to cohort requirements and access. An initial task would articulate a concept such as human dignity; a service report would examine an encounter and partner feedback; and a final task would reconsider the initial judgement with reasons. Reflective attention to assumptions could be incorporated into the tasks, with relevant prior monastic experience recorded rather than assumed. Delivery records would document which tasks and feedback occurred, deviations from the plan, workload, and participant concerns. This stage would refine the intervention and assessment before a comparative study.

The follow-up would compare students undertaking the connected tasks with students following the usual curriculum over one to two years. Assignment to conditions would depend on institutional feasibility; where random allocation is practicable, it would strengthen inference, while a nonrandom comparison would require explicit adjustment for baseline differences and cautious attribution. Assessment would occur before the connected activity, at semester end, and at approximately six and twelve months, with a twenty-four-month assessment where a two-year study is feasible. The same consenting participants would be followed where possible, and attrition and missing observations would be reported. Cohort-specific requirements, prior service, prior coursework, religious background, and previous reflective experiences would inform the analysis of differences between groups.

The principal learning outcome would be the quality of reasoned connections in student work: conceptual accuracy, interpretation of a concrete encounter, engagement with counterevidence and partner perspectives, and justification of subsequent judgement or action. A rubric would be refined through expert review and pilot scoring, with scoring consistency examined before substantive comparisons. Sample requirements would be justified in advance against the primary outcome, expected variation, design, and attrition. Quantitative analysis would estimate group differences in change with uncertainty, while interviews with students, instructors, and partners would examine how connections arise and why they persist or weaken. Selection for interviews would seek contrasting experiences, including disengagement and disagreement. A second reader would examine a subset of qualitative material using a documented coding guide, with disagreements and revisions recorded.

The design should distinguish the contribution of the relational framework from the value of any single activity. A comparison with ordinary reflective service-learning would assess whether coordination adds educational value. Comparing learning with and without a separate monastic or contemplative activity would clarify the contribution of that setting alongside reflective attention within other tasks. Formulaic transformation narratives, pressure to disclose belief, or partner burdens despite positive student ratings would identify mechanisms requiring redesign. Accounts of respite, peer interaction, and novelty would also be considered alongside specifically contemplative interpretations.

Progression decisions would be specified before recruitment. The feasibility stage should establish deliverable tasks, interpretable assessment evidence, proportionate workload, and workable protections for conscience and research participation. The comparative follow-up would then inform decisions to retain, adapt, or discontinue particular connections according to learning, equity, community value, and resource demands. This staged approach turns the present paper’s conceptual contribution into a programme of empirical inquiry with explicit outcomes and decision points.

5.5. Contribution, Scope, and Transferability

This article makes three connected contributions. Theologically, it interprets the relationship among knowledge, responsibility, and discernment in Ex Corde Ecclesiae as a curricular question. Analytically, KSCI identifies reciprocal learning relationships and distinguishes them from programme membership, sequencing, or positive experience alone. Empirically, the documentary analysis brings multi-semester institutional indicators and published qualitative findings into that question, identifying existing resources for connected assessment and the evidence needed to evaluate it. The result is a framework grounded in a specific educational setting and sufficiently explicit to guide subsequent research.

The evidence supports a substantive account of recurring provision, reported experiences, and relationships for curricular investigation. The measurement and sampling limits described in Section 4.3 and Section 4.4 define the scope of this interpretation. Individual learning trajectories and the educational effects of KSCI are the focus of the linked, comparative research proposed in Section 5.4. Transferability rests on whether other institutions face comparable questions about links among courses, service, reflection, conscience, and community judgement; applying the framework elsewhere requires attention to their own categories, traditions, and student pathways.

6. Conclusions

Catholic formation becomes a curricular inquiry when intellectual understanding, service, and reflective discernment are examined in relation to one another. The CUK analysis identifies organisational connections, recurring service provision, and reported reflective and relational experiences. These findings give practical substance to the integrative purpose articulated in Ex Corde Ecclesiae and establish a basis for asking how learning travels across activities. KSCI’s contribution is to specify that relational question and translate it into connected assessment, respect for conscience, and community participation in judging educational value.

The proposed research agenda builds directly on this contribution. A one-semester feasibility study would refine connected tasks and assessment, followed by a one- to two-year comparative study of learning, experience, and community value. This sequence makes effectiveness an explicit next question supported by an articulated framework, existing component evidence, and a testable design. The present article advances the conceptual and documentary foundations of that inquiry while recognising students and community partners as participants in determining what integral education achieves.