Pop-Culture Reimagined Folklore: Interactive Educational Pedagogy for Cultural Empathy & Moral Literacy

Abstract

Traditional folklore holds profound moral and cultural value, still traditional transmission methods fail to engage digital-native learners, creating a disconnect from cultural heritage. POP-LORE addresses this gap by combining modern visual re-interpretations with interactive digital technology to enhance cultural empathy and moral literacy in contemporary education. The innovation transforms classic folklore figures such as Bota, Penanggalan, and the seven princesses of Ulek Mayang into relatable pop-culture posters integrated with Web-based Augmented Reality (WebAR) and gamified moral-reflection toolkits. By subverting traditional "fearsome monster" tropes into relatable modern roles such as tailors, rock stars, and students, POP-LORE reduces emotional resistance and fosters critical thinking about empathy, anti-bullying, and ethical behaviour. The novelty lies in its pioneering design framework and creative guidelines, which provide a structured methodology for students and creative industry professionals to systematically deconstruct traditional folklore and re-imagine it into contemporary visual posters. By bridging cultural heritage with modern pop-culture aesthetics, this framework converts abstract mythologies into accessible, market-ready visual assets. Enhanced by a "phygital" (physical-digital) delivery system, it pairs fine-art adaptations with WebAR overlays that require no application downloads, offering interactive storyboards, dialect audio, and moral reflection quizzes directly from the physical print. POP-LORE offers high commercialization potential across educational institutions, design agencies, museums, and cultural tourism sectors as both a professional ideation tool and a scalable gallery-walk kit. By modernising heritage preservation through cross-disciplinary art, technology, and ethics, POP-LORE establishes an inclusive, future-ready pedagogical tool that transforms static classroom walls into immersive, value-driven learning environments for secondary and tertiary educational ecosystems.