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This study centres on understanding teachers' curriculum decision making (CDM) and pupils' subject choice in physical education. The curriculum reform chosen to illustrate these two central issues is Higher Grade Physical Education (HGPE), a nationally available qualification in physical education that has been available to fifth and sixth year (16 to 18 year olds) Scottish secondary pupils from 1993. The focus on teacher CDM and pupil subject choice contributes more generally to our understanding of the social construction of physical education as a school subject. The framework used to investigate the social construction of knowledge, teacher CDM and pupil subject choice is Basil Bernstein's model of the social construction of pedagogic discourse. Bernstein's three fields of knowledge production and reproduction and his notion of pedagogic discourse allowed the framing of the examination of the development, mediation and reproduction of the HGPE course. The study illustrates how the dominant model for innovation in Scottish schools continues to be external leadership by the centre and how agents operating at this level constructed HGPE as a science-based, sport-performance-oriented discourse. The findings suggest that teachers' and pupils' interpretations of the HGPE discourse are not explicit reasons for the decision to offer or study the subject but are more likely to be embedded in the context in which individual teachers work and in pupils' enjoyment and future vocation. Emerging issues that are discussed include the process of managing HGPE by the SEB and the extent to which the SEB exercised power to mandate precisely the form HGPE should take as it was implemented in secondary schools. A lack of external support in delivering HGPE, teacher de-professionalisation and de-skilling and professional development support for teachers are all identified and discussed. The study concludes with suggestions for the future construction of knowledge within the Scottish education system and ideas regarding what can be done to promote HGPE.

This PhD project examines changing conceptions of physical exercise and bodily health in eighteenth-century France. Enlightenment culture in Europe provided an atmosphere of reform within which both society and individual were viewed as malleable. A new criterion of social utility governed discussions of health and education, and highlighted the unreformed status of certain sections of society. There was an understanding in France that urban life generally, and the urban elite in particular, had degenerated. The idleness of the gens du monde was considered a significant factor in the corruption of modern French society; the physical languor it produced was seen to render people useless to the nation. Fears surrounding depopulation and military weakness gave further impetus to calls for reform. Good health and the physical strength associated with it were perceived to key to the reversal of both urban decline and military fragility. The mother-to-be, the child and the noble officer were targeted in the drive to produce healthy, virtuous citizens. The thesis argues that a transformed conceptualization of physical education, emerging from a preoccupation with preventive medicine, was central to ideas regarding the health and strength of the nation. Drawing on manuals concerned with health and education, discussions of health in the press, polemics on the function of the nobility, and the correspondence of the Société Royale de Médecine, a distinct shift is traced in the ways in which exercise was discussed in the second half of the century. This was characterised by a view of exercise which focused upon adding strength and vigour, in contrast to earlier accounts which defined movement as a means of balancing or stabilizing what entered or exited the body.

Objectives: To contribute to knowledge on the reliability and validity of the contingent valuation method (CVM) and explore the role of context-specific CVM question formats in Southeast Nigeria. Other objectives were to determine the factors that will explain actual willingness to pay (WTP) for insecticide-treated nets (ITNs). Methods: There was an extensive review of theoretical, methodological and empirical literature. A novel WTP question format that mimics price-taking behaviour in south- east Nigeria (called the structured haggling technique (SH)) was developed and compared with the bidding game (BG) and binary with follow-up technique (BWFU). The comparisons were for inter-rater and test-retest reliability, content, construct and criterion validity and the study conducted in three villages in Nigeria. Stated WTP was determined using a questionnaire administered to 810 household heads, while actual WTP was evaluated by offering the ITNs for sale to all respondents after one month of the first survey. Findings: There were considerable gaps in the literature regarding the reliability and validity of the CVM. In the empirical study, BG, BWFU and SH elicited reliable and valid estimates of WTP. The SH was the most content valid, while the BG and SH were the most construct-valid for ITNs and re-treatment respectively. The BG and SH were similarly criterion-valid while the BWFU was the least criterion-valid. All question formats were similar for tests of reliability. There were genuine reasons for divergences between the stated and actual WTP and for test and retest. Low-income status and physical accessibility were the major impediments to ITNs acquisition. Conclusion: The CVM could be used to elicit valid and reliable WTP estimates in the study area, but it was not clearly proven that better content-valid question formats would lead to more valid and reliable estimates of WTP. It is necessary to further determine how the validity and reliability of the SH and other WTP question formats could be improved. Finally, future studies should establish the content validity of question formats in settings where they will be used, and use bigger sample sizes, along with allowing less time between the survey and administering the criterion, for comparing stated and actual WTP.

Underpinned by Bandura’s social-cognitive theory (SCT), this thesis examined the perceptions of physical activity (PA) in healthy and unhealthy older adults, and examined imagery as a potential strategy to promote PA. Focus groups with healthy older adults (Chapter 2) and those diagnosed with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) (Chapter 3) examined how PA is incorporated into daily living, and the unique barriers and enablers of PA in older adults. The subsequent chapters focus on the role of imagery as a strategy to increase PA. Using the revised applied model of deliberate imagery use as a framework, Chapter 4 explored where, when, what, and why older adults image PA. Based on Chapter 2 and 3’s finding that older adults use a range of imagery types and functions, and the importance of self-regulation, Chapter 5 investigated how self-regulatory imagery (i.e., images of goals and planning) related with social-cognitive variables, enjoyment, and PA. Overall, the thesis recognises the importance of SCT in explaining the unique challenges older adults face in relation to PA while accounting for contextual factors including PA level, disease severity, and employment status. The thesis also demonstrates imagery as a potential strategy for promoting PA in older adults.