Traits of Complex Thinking: A Bibliometric Review of a Disruptive Construct in Education

Abstract

The purpose of this research is to contextualize the behavior of publications on complex thinking in education. A total of 428 documents compiled in Scopus from 1937 to 2022 were analyzed with a bibliometric study considering criteria such as “complex thinking”, “complex thought”, and “reasoning for complexity”, all combined with education. The results show 153, 47, and 5 publications for each criterion with their related disciplines, citations, types of documents, universities, prominent authors, researching countries, and the general diachronic evolution of the subject, this allows to establish an idea about the implications of the present study according to one of the most important databases in the world. It is concluded that complex thinking and its relationship with education awakens a greater interest in the academy, not only because of its incidence in diverse fields that are nourished by it for the generation of new multidisciplinary knowledge but also because of the published research that demonstrates its transcendence.