Meta-Skills: Best practices in work-based learning: A literature review

This review of literature was commissioned by Skills Development Scotland (SDS) to help deepen its understanding of meta-skills with a particular interest in work-based learning. The review pays particular attention to best practices in the science of learning and how this could be applied to apprenticeships in Scotland, to the role of the individual learner in the learning process, to the evaluation of meta-skills and to the transferability and translatability of meta-skills from one context to another. As a result of the review recommendations are offered for the further development and delivery of meta-skills in Scotland.

Across the world there is a growing interest in frameworks which seek to describe the competencies, capabilities, dispositions, habits or wider skills which are likely to be most useful at work, in life and in learning. While there are different ways of grouping meta-skills, there is a growing consensus as to what these skills are.

The foundation of this review has been an extensive search for relevant frameworks from across the globe that use words like 'attributes', 'capabilities', 'character', 'competences', 'habits', 'non-cognitive skills', 'soft skills', 'wider skills' to frame their understanding of meta skills.

This review provides an overview of meta-skills frameworks and of the development practices associated with them. It offers pointers for best practice.