Academic literacy as a component of complex thinking in higher education: A scoping review

The profound transformation within higher education institutions is increasingly evident. Then, it is considered that education must adapt to meet the needs of qualification and skills development in a 21st century with diverse challenges in problem solving. This is reflected in the role that academic literacy is increasingly taking as a strategy to innovate teaching among university students. The objective of this scoping review is to complete a characterization of complex thinking in both academic literacy and higher education. All this, providing an overview on the central theme and its incidence in the production of relevant literature published in the Scopus database. About 139 research works were considered in the article, which become thematic references for the exercise proposed here. Then, a description of all the works consulted was completed, recognizing mainly their origin, citations, publication, and other aspects that will ultimately be essential to differentiate the term academic literacy from the processes of reading and writing as educational competencies. Therefore, in general, the conclusions indicate that complex thinking has indeed a relationship with academic literacy not only because of the works traced but also because complex reasoning brings together within people a series of skills that facilitate the execution of advanced actions and the solution of problems.