Perfiles de estilos de pensamiento en estudiantes universitarios: Implicaciones para el ajuste al espacio europeo de educación superior

Today's university is facing up to demanding challenges, especially in connection with the quality of teaching-learning process. In this context, the skills like thinking styles are particularly relevant in order to mediate a greater or less adjustment to the learning required. The aim of this paper is double: to know what type of profiles show university students (these profiles are raised and analyzed by the Threefold Model of Intellectual Styles of Sternberg and Zhang) and to discuss about students adjustment to the new demands of the European Higher Education Area (EHEA) theoretically and according to profiles of thinking styles of students. A sample of 279 college students form fifteen degrees, has answered to the Thinking Styles Questionnaire for Students. The information provided by a cluster analysis has identified five profiles of thinking styles. Results are discussed in relation to the validity of the three-factor model of Sternberg and Zhang and, regarding to the academic implications of each of the five profiles obtained, may have relation to the type of learning the EHEA.