Cultivating Critical Cultural Awareness: Teaching World Literature through Intercultural Pedagogy in the Tertiary Level

This research investigates the efficacy of world literature teaching in developing intercultural competence and reflective thinking among tertiary students. With rising global interconnectivity and cultural diversity shaping the face of tertiary education, the contribution of literature to developing students' ethical, emotional and cognitive abilities has become critical again. Based on a qualitative research design, the study analyzed the ways in which Filipino students reacted to culturally diverse world literature and how such interaction had an impact on their empathy development, receptivity to cultural difference and critical self-reflection. Data were gathered through student reflective outputs and semi-structured student interviews of world literature courses from three universities. Results showed that students made noticeable gains in intercultural competence, especially in emotional empathy and acceptance of new worldviews. Texts from literature encouraged learners to question stereotypes, examine their own cultural presumptions, and make insightful connections between international narratives and local social concerns. Teachers' employment of intercultural pedagogy, via varied text choice, comparative evaluation and reflective evaluation had a crucial function in enhancing students' moral imagination and cultural consciousness. Grounded in the theoretical frameworks of Nussbaum’s narrative imagination, Byram’s intercultural competence, and Damrosch’s conception of world literature, this study underscores the transformative potential of literature instruction when aligned with intercultural educational goals. It recommends the sustained integration of world literature and intercultural pedagogy in higher education curricula to promote critical cultural consciousness and global citizenship among learners.