Developing Complex Thinking Skills to Foster Intercultural Citizenship: Mixed-Methods Evidence from Four Latin American Contexts

The notion of complex thinking has become established as an essential competency for understanding multidimensional social phenomena and for engaging with democratic processes in diverse contexts. This study examined within-individual changes associated with participation in an educational intervention aimed at developing complex thinking among university students in Bolivia, Chile, Colombia, and Mexico, and explored their implications for intercultural citizenship education. A quasi-experimental pretest–posttest design was employed, drawing on panel data and fixed-effects regression models to estimate intraindividual variation over time, complemented by an exploratory differential analysis by sex. The findings revealed statistically significant within-individual changes across the four evaluated subdimensions, as well as differentiated patterns by sex, with women showing higher relative changes in critical and innovative thinking and men showing higher relative changes in scientific reasoning. Interpreted in dialogue with existing literature, these observed changes in complex thinking are consistent with theoretical frameworks that conceptualize such competencies as relevant cognitive foundations for intercultural citizenship. Overall, the study provides empirically grounded insights into the role of complexity-oriented learning experiences in higher education in Latin America and outlines considerations for the design of more context-sensitive and equity-oriented educational initiatives.