Korean Confucianism's Mindful Learning Model of Moral Internalization as Manifested in the Cheonghak-Dong Hermit Community

The purpose of this qualitative study is to understand an unknown educational approach in Korean Confucianism's ethical education characterized as moral internalization, based on the study participants. A prevailed understanding of moral internalization of Confucianism is a strong imposed learning process, which is a well known Asian learning style, a cramming or oppressive learning. However, this study discovered that the ethical learning process of Confucian moral education is a combination of mindful learning and imposed learning. It can be found that the ethical learning process generates four types of ethics, aborted ethics, miscarried ethics, externalized ethics, and internalized ethics in the intercultural learning context. From these findings emerging from the qualitative data, this study developed a grounded theory Korean Confucianism's Mindful Learning Model of Moral Internalization. The mindful learning process in the model makes this grounded theory different from other internalization theories like Vygotsky's cultural internalization theory. In addition, a combination of the two learning process, mindful learning and imposed learning makes this grounded theory significantly different from Langer's mindful learning concept that overlooks traditional imposed learning for educational processes. This grounded theory can contribute to a better understanding of traditional, ethical education in Korean Confucianism. And it will help those who engage in education in associations with ethical and intercultural matters to better understand the outcomes of the cultural learning process in intercultural context. [The dissertation citations contained here are published with the permission of ProQuest LLC. Further reproduction is prohibited without permission. Copies of dissertations may be obtained by Telephone (800) 1-800-521-0600. Web page: http://www.proquest.com/en-US/products/dissertations/individuals.shtml.]