Few historians would question the importance of national literature to the understanding of national history. Less frequently, especially in Scottish history, is equal attention given to the print medium. Publishing and the book trade represent a complex cocktail of conscience and commerce, of ideology and industry, and one of the tensions within the study of publishing, especially in the turmoil of the early modern period, is the assessment of motive underpinning the act of publication. Two objectives are sought in this research of the book trade of Scotland c1500 to c1720. The degree, scale, structure and financial basis of the book trade are considered. In particular, data obtained from a large number of existing and new references to individual booksellers and printers has been accumulated in order to establish the extent, development, and general pattern of commerce. Secondly, the interaction of public policy and the book trade is explored with separate chapters on the policy of the burghs, the church and the government. As part of government control close scrutiny is given to the law of publishing with chapters devoted to copyright and censorship, two themes for which adequate Scottish study is long overdue. In addition, a bridging chapter is included dealing with trade links between Scotland and the Low Countries, and this reflects vividly the conflicting demands of permission and prohibition for book merchants and book regulators. The research comes to two apparently contrasting conclusions. The book trade of early modern Scotland was in many respects similar to those of other European nations at this time, especially England and the Low Countries. The desire for profit and intellectual improvement, but also adequate controls, were common to all literate societies. Equally, although the beaches of Scottish print culture were battered by the influences of Dutch and English commercial, legal and administrative conventions, Scotland developed its own unique relationship to the printed word - a Scottish tradition.

This study monitored the conceptualisation, implementation and evaluation of criterion-referenced assessment for Modern Dance by two teachers specifically chosen because they represented the two most usual stances in current teaching i.e. one valuing dance as part of a wider, more general education, the other as a performance art. The Review of Literature investigated the derivation of these differences and identified the kinds of assessment criteria which would be relevant in each context. It then questioned both the timing of the application of the criteria and the benefits and limitations inherent in using a pre-active or re-active model. Lastly it examined the philosophy of criterion-referenced assessment and thereafter formulated the main hypothesis, i. e. "That criterion-referenced assessment is an appropriate and realistic method for Modern Dance in schools". Both the main and sub-hypotheses were tested by the use of Case Study/Collaborative Action research. In this chosen method of investigation the teachers' actions were the primary focus of study while the researcher played a supportive but ancillary role. The study has three sections. The first describes the process experienced by the teachers as they identified their criteria for assessment and put their new strategy into action. It shows the problems which arose and the steps which were taken to resolve them. It gives exemplars of the assessment instruments which were designed and evaluates their use. It highlights the differences in the two approaches to dance and the different competencies required by the teachers if their criterion-referenced strategy was adequately and validly to reflect the important features of their course. In the second section the focus moves from the teachers to the pupils. Given that the pupils have participated in different programmes of dance, the study investigates what criteria the pupils spontaneously use and what criteria they can be taught to use. It does this through the introduction of self-assessment in each course. In this way the pupils' observations and movement analyses were made explicit and through discussion, completing specially prepared leaflets and using video, they were recorded and compared. And finally, the research findings were circulated to a larger number of teachers to find to what extent their concerns and problems had been anticipated by the first two and to discover if they, without extensive support, could also mount a criterion-referenced assessment strategy with an acceptable amount of effort and within a realistic period of time. And given that they could, the final question concerned the evaluations of all those participants i.e. teachers, parents and pupils. Would this extended group similarly endorse the strategy and strengthen the claim that criterion-referenced assessment was a valid and beneficial way of assessing Modern Dance in Schools?

This research explored the learning conceptions of a culturally diverse population of post-graduate health and life sciences students at a Scottish university; and investigated the relationship between their learning conceptions and academic achievement. There is a vast literature on conceptions of learning deriving from a variety of disciplines, although few studies have addressed the conceptions of experienced learners. A mixed methods approach was implemented, which is underpinned by a phenomenographic methodology. The participants comprised individuals from thirty-two nations, which were broken down into five cultural clusters. Quantitative data were gathered from 156 students, using the Conceptions of Learning Inventory (COLI) (Purdie & Hattie, 2002) and their predicted, and actual, academic performance at the end of their first semester. Three focus groups further explored students’ understanding, and experiences, of learning and assessment. There were some cultural differences in conceptions of learning identified in this study; generally, students from Central Africa scored most learning conceptions higher than students from other cultural clusters. There were no learning conceptions that predicted academic achievement with this group of post-graduate health and life sciences students, although there was a relationship between predicted academic performance and ‘personal development’ and ‘broadening horizons’. Possible explanations for these outcomes are presented. Contrary to previous research, predicted academic performance was not correlated with academic achievement. There were no cultural differences in academic achievement, but more students from Central Africa predicted that they would perform well than students from other cultural clusters. There is some support for learning conceptions sitting in a nested hierarchy, as found by previous research, but this study cannot confirm the exact order of these learning conceptions. In light of these findings, suggestions for future research are considered, with an emphasis on the relationship between learning context and conceptions of learning; and longitudinal research focusing on the development of learning conceptions. Implications of the outcomes from this study for university learning and teaching, as well as international and staff development policies, are presented.

This thesis uses the minute books and manuscript magazines of Glasgow’s literary societies as evidence for my argument that the history of mutual improvement groups—including literary societies—needs to be re-written as a unique movement of ‘improvement’ during the long nineteenth century. In foregrounding the surviving records, I examine what it meant to be literary to society members in Glasgow during this period. I discuss what their motivations were for becoming so, and reflect on the impact that gender, occupation and social class had on these. I demonstrate that these groups contributed to the education and literacy of people living in the city and to a larger culture of ‘improvement’. Further, I argue that there is a case to be made for a particularly Scottish way of consuming texts in the long nineteenth century. In Glasgow, there were at least 193 literary societies during this period, which I divide into four phases of development. I provide an in-depth examination of two societies which serve as case studies. In addition, I give an overview and comparison of the 652 issues of Scottish and English society magazines I discovered in the context of a larger, ‘improving’ culture. I offer possible reasons why so many literary societies produced manuscript magazines, and show that this phenomenon was not unique to them. These magazines fostered a communal identity formed around a combination of religion, class, gender and local identity. I determine that societies in England produced similar types of magazines to those in Scotland possibly based upon the Scottish precedent. These materials substantially contribute to the evidence for nineteenth-century mutual improvement societies and their magazines, and for working- and lower-middle class Scottish readers and writers during the long nineteenth century, social groups that are under-represented in the history of reading and in Victorian studies.

Sustainability, and transitions away from currently prevailing unsustainability, is a project with political (economic) and cultural dimensions. Yet, the potential of a cultural political lens to investigate sustainability prefigurations is neglected by the academy. Moreover, existing cultural political conceptualizations are ontologically incoherent with green political perspectives. In this thesis, I articulate a revised notion of cultural politics consistent with normative visions of sustainability transitions, and validate the new approach through an exploratory investigation of Scottish community woodland organizations (CWOs). CWOs are alternative organizations troubling hegemonic land tenurial and forest management practices. However, these organizations are under- researched by sustainability scholars. The study shows how one CWO prefigures sustainability transitions, not least through distinctive woodland artistic activities. The thesis narrates threefold theoretical originality, and also extends empirical knowledge. Originality lies (first) in the practice-theoretical recasting of cultural politics theory, (second) in the synthesis concept describing practices of everyday artistic activism, and (third) in the green republican interpretive framework of sustainability subjectivities, against which cultural political performances may be evaluated. Empirical originality lies in the exploration of community woodlands. I argue that through practices of everyday artistic activism and more general woodland practices, woodland activists perform alternative conceptions of human-nature relations, intrahuman relations, and organization. Through these performances, woodland artistic activists enact a cultural politics of sustainability transitions, and make visible alternative modes of humans being in the world. The study contributes to theoretical debates concerned with cultural politics and artistic activism, with researching community organizing for sustainability transitions, and with interpretive approaches to sustainability knowledge production. Empirically, it extends alternative organizational knowledge, showing how sustainability subjectivities can be communicated through woodland practices.

The first aim of this thesis is to present a comprehensive toponymic listing and analysis for six parishes of Western Strathearn, and this is done in Part One where approximately 2500 place-names are considered. The medieval parishes of BQR, COM, TEX, MUT, MZX and MXZ form a continuous, largely upland, area, topographically distinct from the Strathearn parishes to the east, and with the exception of Innerpeffray (part of MXZ, see esp. Part Two, Appendix 1b) somewhat less affected, in the 12c to 14c at least, by inward migration of Anglo-Norman and other non-Gaelic groups or individuals. Thus we might expect this western area to be the most conservative part of an earldom that Cynthia Neville has characterised as conservative and insular as late as 13c when compared to other major Scottish earldoms and lordships (Neville 1983, eg vol i, 156, Neville 2000, 76). The core lands of the more easterly medieval parish of FOW were subjected to the same comprehensive toponymic analysis. Though that toponymic material could not be included for reasons of space, it has contributed, along with the material from the six parishes covered in the gazetteers below, to the second main aspect of the thesis, the discussion of lordship and land organisation in Part Two. In Part Two will also be found an introduction to the earldom of Strathearn and a discussion of a number of aspects of its history, as well as appendices giving additional information relevant to the topics discussed in the body of the thesis. The parish unit was chosen as the basis for the organisation of this thesis since John Rogers (Rogers 1992, esp. 125-7) has shown the fundamental link between the form of the ecclesiastical parishes, whose creation was complete by 12c, and pre-existing units of land usually referred to as multiple estates, a multiple estate being a group of individual estates, not necessarily contiguous, organised and operated as a coherent social, tenurial and economic unit. As Rogers puts it, multiple estates were essentially units of lordship, taking the form of a principal settlement or caput with a number of dependent settlements. They contained within their bounds all the resources required to support their economies and to produce the necessary renders. Accordingly they were arranged in the landscape to exploit those resources, a process which often produced irregular geographical forms, including areas detached from the main body of the estate. This process frequently led to a specialisation of function, such as the management of pasture, amongst the component settlements. Jones (1976) discusses the multiple estate in the context of the early British Isles, Dodgshon (1981, esp. 58ff) in a Scottish context. The latter writer says (op. cit., 58) that in their variety of scale, multiple estates have often been likened to a parish, though some were undoubtedly larger, adding that lordship was exercised over them by a tribal chief, a king or a feudal baron. Many of these characteristics will be found relevant to the discussion of land organisation and lordship in Part Two. In our present state of knowledge, then, the medieval parishes are the best representation we have of the patterns of land organisation in Strathearn as they may have been in the time of the late Pictish and early Scottish kingdoms. A practical demonstration of the relevance of parish boundaries lies in the fact that it is rare indeed to find a settlement place-name whose area of reference straddles the boundary of a medieval parish. It is overwhelmingly within the context of the original parish that the place-names of an area have coherence and are most likely to give up their secrets.

The Conservative government applied restrictive immigration policies on people from the Indian sub-continent (Pakistan, India and Bangladesh) on a large scale during the 1980s for reasons which have been depicted as economic, political, and nationalistic. The Conservative party under Thatcher made immigration control one of its main themes in the 1979 Conservative Manifesto. This thesis looks at the repercussions of Thatcher's immigration policy for people from the Indian sub-continent living in Glasgow. Drawing on a wealth of primary sources, the thesis will argue that Thatcher's immigration policy amounted to discrimination as Indian sub-continent nationals, especially males, suffered unfairly when the policy was implemented. Evidence of this unfairness was implicit in: the various rules and laws which contained elements of discrimination; and evidence from the organisation network in Glasgow which revealed that they had to deal with extra work and with more contentious cases during the 1980s. The impact on individuals was most strongly exemplified by a survey and by individual case studies which revealed problems such as provocative questioning, application of stringent criteria to satisfy the authorities, and the break-up and separation of families who were prevented from being reunited, in some cases even temporarily, by the actions of the authorities. The fact is that no account was taken of the clinical characteristics of the Indian sub-continent which clashed in particular with the primary purpose rule which the authorities applied rigorously. While it is acknowledged that other groups of blacks and coloured immigrants also suffered from the Conservative immigration regime, it will be noted that the impact was most severe on immigrants from the Indian sub-continent. The tough policy on immigration only served to encourage more clandestine means of entry into the United Kingdom, and this gave the government a further pretext to impose more controls on immigration from the Indian sub continent. It has to be emphasised that the extent of the restrictive immigration control regime will be measured not simply in terms of numbers allowed entry but also the procedures used such as the type of questions asked, interviewing techniques and manners, and various provisions made in legislative acts which served against potential immigrants from the Indian sub-continent.

This thesis explores the discovery, investigation and prosecution of, as well as the men and women involved as suspects and witnesses in, cases of suspected new-born child murder and concealment of pregnancy in Scotland between 1812 and 1930. The study utilises pre-trial and other legal documents relating to these cases to outline both the continuities with other studies and aspects of the subject that are peculiar to Scotland during the period. An examination of the pre-trial documents not only reveals the various responses to suspicions of pregnancy and murder by the local community, it also shows that in a number of cases investigators harboured suspicions that members of the community were involved, either as an accessory to a crime, or withholding evidence. However, this information is largely ignored by prosecutors, and the vast majority of those tried were the victims’ mothers, an outcome that this thesis argues was a combination of a number of legal and medico-legal processes and procedures. This thesis also argues that the information provided by the pre-trial evidence can provide a more nuanced understanding of these ‘crimes’ – particularly at a local level – that is otherwise obscured by official statistics, that in turn can be used to challenge the prevailing historical consensus that has developed around certain aspects of the subject. The first chapter provides the legal and medico-legal contexts. Chapters Two and Three look at the discovery of, and responses to, the signs of pregnancy, recent delivery and of the bodies of new-born infants. Chapter Three argues that whilst communities were quick to observe the signs of pregnancy, they were less inclined to inform the authorities of their suspicions until after the signs of delivery, or a body, had been discovered. Chapter 4 looks at the profiles of suspects, and also at the geography of the ‘crimes’, and Chapter 5 looks at those men and women suspected of being an accessory to murder, and of helping to conceal a pregnancy or an infant’s death. This chapter reveals that the pretrial documents reveal that in a number of cases investigators suspected relatives, friends, the victims’ fathers, and in some cases even doctors and midwives, to be involved in various ways in cases of suspected new-born child murder. As such it provides a strong challenge to the historiographical consensus that new-born child murder was a sex-specific crime, carried out by the victim’s mother, acting alone. Chapters 6 and 7 explore the role of the police and medical witnesses respectively, both prior to a formal accusation, and during the official investigation. Chapter 7 also includes a detailed look at the medical reports pertaining to the examination of suspects and the post mortem examination of the victims. The final chapter looks at the witnesses and evidence presented at the trial, focusing in particular on the medico-legal issues that made it difficult for prosecutors to secure a successful murder conviction. The chapter argues that whilst these issues could be part of a wider culture of sympathy towards new-born child murder suspects, the evidence from the verdicts and sentencing can also demonstrate a hardening of judicial attitudes over the period.

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