Interpersonal Competence as a Dimension of Global Competence and its Relationship with Academic Motivation among Undergraduate Students

Abstract

Global competence is integral to higher education because students need the knowledge, skills, and attitudes to learn effectively and participate in an interconnected world. Interpersonal competence is one part of it: the ability to cooperate and communicate with people from different cultural and educational backgrounds. This study examined the relationship between interpersonal competence (Skills) and undergraduate students' academic motivation, using a quantitative correlational design. Data were collected from 1,200 undergraduate students in the Education departments of three universities in Lahore. The Skills dimension of the Global Competence Scale (Liu et al., 2020) measured interpersonal competence, and the Academic Motivation Scale (AMS) measured academic motivation. Pearson product-moment correlations were computed between skills and intrinsic motivation, extrinsic motivation, and amotivation. Skills showed statistically significant moderate positive correlations with intrinsic motivation (r = 0.409, p < 0.001) and extrinsic motivation (r = 0.364, p < .001), and a statistically significant but very weak negative correlation with amotivation (r = −0.133, p < 0.001). Students with stronger interpersonal skills therefore tended to report higher intrinsic and extrinsic motivation, while the association with amotivation was small.