Meta-skills: exciting opportunity or neo-liberal retread?

Abstract

The term Meta-skills has become prominent in education in the last decade and, in Scotland, has increasingly been seen at the forefront of policy agendas. Based on the idea of Metacognition, and so claiming to derive from evidence of Psychology and Cognitive Science, the Meta-skills concept seems to offer an exciting and quintessentially 21^st century opportunity.  Or does it? Is the idea coherent and evidence-based? Indeed, is it new or merely a rebranding of those key/core/transferable/soft skills that have been contested since the 1980s?  Does it represent a further neo-liberal strategy to vocationalise education, prioritising making learners ‘ready for the market’? This paper asks what are Meta-skills and what do they have to offer (or threaten) to those working in adult education?