Student Engagement in Literature Education: Emotional and Cultural Dimensions in Higher Education
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Abstract
Literature education plays a significant role in shaping students' cognitive and emotional development, yet research on students' subjective experiences with literature remains underexplored. While much has been studied regarding the cognitive benefits of literature, less attention has been given to how students emotionally and culturally engage with literary texts. This gap in understanding motivates the need for research that investigates the lived experiences of students in literature education. In this study, we employed a phenomenological approach to explore how students engage with English and Indonesian literature, focusing on the emotional, cognitive, and cultural dimensions of their experiences. Through in-depth interviews with 12 students, we identified key themes related to emotional connections to literature, challenges faced in understanding texts, and the impact of teaching methods. The findings reveal that students’ emotional engagement is significantly strengthened when literary texts are connected to their personal experiences and cultural backgrounds, while culturally distant texts tend to create interpretative barriers and reduced participation. Moreover, reflective and dialogic teaching approaches were found to foster deeper student engagement compared to conventional text-centered instruction. These results extend existing literature by demonstrating that emotional and cultural engagement functions not merely as a complementary aspect of literature education, but as a central mechanism shaping comprehension, identity formation, and sustained interest in reading. Our findings suggest that literature education, when approached with an emphasis on personal reflection and cultural relevance, significantly enhances students' engagement and understanding. These insights contribute to the ongoing discourse on student engagement in literature education by offering an experiential framework that integrates emotional resonance and cultural relevance as pedagogical foundations. The study has implications for future research on the role of literature in shaping student identity and cultural awareness, and it suggests avenues for further exploration of teaching methods that facilitate personal engagement with literary texts.
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