Complex Thinking in Higher Education: A Bibliometric Cartography of Trends, Collaboration Networks and Pedagogical Innovations (1994-2025)
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.70577/asce.v5i1.585Keywords:
Critical thinking; Higher education; Reasoning; Bibliometric analysis; Educational innovationAbstract
Complex thinking has positioned itself as an essential macro-competency in higher education, demanding a systematic understanding of how its research field has been configured, its epistemological trends, and the scientific collaboration networks that structure it. This research aims to examine, using a mixed bibliometric approach with a predominantly quantitative focus, the evolution and structure of knowledge about complex thinking at the higher education level. The work involved a first heuristic or exploratory stage, identifying 319 publications on complex thinking and its relationship to higher education, published in the Scopus database from 1994 to 2025. Then, in a second hermeneutic and interpretive stage, the analysis options provided by Scopus and the open-source software Vosviewer were used, allowing the identification of 562 authors, 48 countries, 169 sources, affiliations, thematic areas, and the interpretation of the following six thematic clusters: 1. Epistemological foundations and integrative perspectives of complex thinking; 2. Contextualization, sustainability, and global challenges; 3. Measurement, evaluation, and contextual variability of complex thinking; 4. Pedagogical processes and teacher mediation; 5. Disruptive technologies and innovative teaching methods; and, 6. Educational innovation and emerging competencies. It is concluded that complex thinking in higher education goes from being a purely theoretical concept to becoming an operational and multidimensional strategy, characterized as a structured, technologically assisted ecosystem.
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