Meta-cognition is important in ABE, but not, of course, only in ABE. According to Raban & Lewis (in Wray & Medwell 1994 p.184) it is ‘... closely associated with learning.’ They describe it as follows: ‘Metacognition encompasses thinking about one’s own learning processes as well as the ability to act on that information.’ They describe four ways in which it may be taught, including meta-cognitive explanation and scaffolded instruction. Education should be about the meta-issue as well as the acquisition of skill and knowledge, and scaffolded instruction in thinking can, and should, begin at any age.

Meta-cognition includes learning to understand learning. For example, students need to become overtly and consciously familiar with the methods they use to learn: Why they use them, how they work, why they work, when to apply them and how to apply them. They need to be trained deliberately and consciously to think about their work at this level. To that end their tuition must be transparent and any and every query about it answered in full. When learning a spelling, for example, students need to be in a position confidently to consider how it may be learned. They must have readily to hand different methods by which it may be learned and be able to consider these and select relevant method to suit. If it is a common pattern, is it best learned with other words & through LCWC / SOS? If so, should someone be drafted in to help find other examples of words containing the pattern? Is it a complex word which can usefully be unpacked into root and morphemes, or is it a word which may repay a dictionary investigation, looking for history and considering relationships? Is it worth thinking about which bits are the difficult ones and which are already understood spellings? Is it possible to think of a mnemonic to remember the spelling by? Are there links with other words which may be used to remember this one? And so on. It’s a matter of ownership - it’s their learning and they must own it, clearly, democratically and openly, and at the meta-level.

Meta-linguistics is the higher-order understanding of language. It includes the overt recognition that language is always a tool, sometimes a weapon, and is routinely used to influence the world in particular ways chosen by the author. Meta-linguistics insists upon overt recognition of exactly this whenever text is to be read. Who wrote it, and why? Who is it really for? How is language being deployed? Why so? How is it being used to influence readers; to do particular things with (or to) readers? You and I understand that language is a tool - that it is used to do particular, not always wise, true or friendly, things, to others. We know that we examine much writing critically, even suspiciously. What, we often cry, is the author’s game? Who is the author, anyway? Is there an agenda and, if so, what is it? Is it benign? Who is it targeting? Why so? Our students are not necessarily thus programmed, nor can they easily be so confidently sceptical. They should be, all the same. They need to understand that writing comes in many forms or genres, each with its own highly particular ambition. Writing is always situated and it always has a purpose. It may be innocent purpose, but it may be malign. Students must understand that they may, indeed must, read various texts variously, depending on author and circumstance - that reading is also situated and has purpose, that reading is a critically active process. They need to understand that they may legitimately skim, scan or skip, read lightly or with close attention, read every word or search only for particular items, they may read innocently, critically or downright suspiciously, according to the genre of the writing they are reading and the suspected intent of the author. Students need to know that they need to know all this, and that they need deliberately to apply this knowledge to every reading. They need to learn effective reading, which is, of course, another way of saying that, in respect of reading, they must be critically empowered.

Understanding meta-cognition and the need for meta-cognition, is a major step towards what remains our goal - autonomous and confident competence. We not only need meta-cognition as such, we also need to know that we need it - and we need to be to be told this (and told it rather often). We need to be told that there are broad principles and general approaches which structure and colour detail, and we need to be told that we must deliberately seek and consider these before we get bogged down in this detail. Experts do this. They may have expensive specialist knowledge but, every bit as importantly, they have also been trained to step back and meta-think rather than plunge hotly into detail and get slowly frazzled there. Experts operate among principles and broad categories, after which detail is simply detail. They are trained to find the structure and isolate the relevant, which demands general understanding and the deliberate application of general understanding. They had, though, to be trained to do this; it is no more ‘natural’, no more an innate skill, for them than it is for a novice. Indeed, not very long ago our expert was a novice. All is, in other words, not lost.