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The Treaty of Union 1707 between Scotland and England and the respective implementing legislation in each Kingdom contained provisions which today we might describe as 'opt-outs'. These opt-outs from incorporating Union preserved aspects of the Scottish legal system which, along with the Presbyterian religion and the system of education, helped to ensure that Scottish identity was supported by some of the most powerful aspects of the state. This essay will examine some of the provisions of the Treaty, analyse aspects of the legal system and law that persisted after the Union, comment on the extent to which 310 years of the Union with England influenced that law, reflect on membership of the EU and the harmonization which it brought to the legal system and consider the impact of the Scottish Parliament on that law and legal system. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper considers the intersection of Spiritual Motherhood, early childhood education and child welfare in early twentieth-century Edinburgh. Its focus is St Saviour's Child Garden (SSCG), which opened in the Canongate, in November 1906, part of the Free Kindergarten movement that emerged in Europe and North America in the late nineteenth century. The paper focuses on the SSCG's founder Lileen Hardy, in order to trace the development of this new approach to child welfare and women's work in Britain. It discusses her training at the Sesame House for Home-Life Training in London, her move to Edinburgh, and the network of predominantly women reformers, whose interests ranged from urban reform to medical welfare, she found there. It shows how this network facilitated the founding of the SSCG and discusses the form it took and Hardy's implementation of a modified form of Froebelian praxis. In so doing its concern is to show how Free Kindergarten forms part of a wider history of social welfare and urban reform as well as to the history of early childhood education, and to move attention away from the men usually associated with innovations in Scottish social reform like Patrick Geddes, and onto a group of women who created a women and child-centred proto-Welfare State in pre-First World War Edinburgh. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper traces the key periods, players and events which have contributed to the shaping of the current landscape of teacher education in Scotland. Starting with the Wheatley Report and the formation of the General Teaching Council (Scotland) in the 1960s through to the most recent Donaldson Review of Teacher Education, we examine ebb and flow amongst GTCS, government, colleges of education and universities. Following its own trajectory, Scottish Education resisted and rejected policies emanating from an ‘English’ ideology, capitalised on respect for and influence of the GTCS, and successfully moved teacher education’s base from autonomous colleges to high-status universities. At the core of teacher education in Scotland is the continuing desire for partnership-working amongst key stakeholders: local and national government, GTCS, schools, teacher education institutions, teaching unions, parents and pupils. A teaching profession of trained graduates, underpinned by university-led subject study, is now moving steadily towards Masters-level professional learning for all. Although having faced some troubled episodes, this period has also been characterised by remarkable stability and consensus and, although still tackling the improvement agenda suggested by the recent Donaldson review, teacher education in Scotland has retained a high degree of public and political trust. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Educational research in Scotland has a very distinguished history and has made a major contribution in several aspects of methodology, not least in the relationships between researchers, policymakers and practitioners. The paper considers the Scottish contribution to the development of educational research past, present and future and the significance of interactions at three levels - the UK, European and global. Against the backdrop of the forthcoming Independence vote, it is argued that the historic distinctiveness of educational provision in Scotland - both before and after devolution - has been a significant benefit to the research community here. However, there are some internal dependencies that may need active nurturing, if the benefits of this independence are to be sustained. Furthermore there are critical elements of interdependence, at all three levels, which will be important in pursuing an aspiration to maintain research of the highest quality that will support learners and teachers in the years ahead. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

By outlining the contribution made by private libraries to the intellectual and cultural lives of a specific group of readers in the rural north-east of Scotland, this article asks what role family libraries played in the growth of library provision in the long eighteenth century. With book lending becoming something of a social imperative in the polite culture of late Georgian Britain, private libraries often served as a practical resource for the wider community, providing books that could not be acquired elsewhere, and filling important gaps in 'public sphere' provision in rural communities without access to subscription or circulating libraries. More importantly, though, the practice of book sharing had far-reaching consequences for community cohesion, shared reading habits, and intellectual culture. In particular, this essay points to the role played by the physical exchange of private books in the dissemination and widespread acceptance of new ideas relating to female education, child-rearing, and separate spheres associated with James Fordyce and Jean-Jacques Rousseau. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the nineteenth century nationalism and historiography were closely linked, and the absence of separatist nationalism in Scotland had consequences for academic history. This article looks at the content of university history teaching, using sources such as lecture notes, textbooks, and inaugural lectures. The nature of the Scottish curriculum made the Ordinary survey courses more significant than specialised Honours teaching. While chairs of general history were founded only in the 1890s, the teaching of constitutional history in law faculties from the 1860s transmitted an older tradition of whig constitutionalism, based partly on the idea of racial affinity between the English and Scots, which was reinforced by the influence of the English historians Stubbs and Seeley. Academic historians shared contemporary views of history as an evolutionary science, which stressed long-term development and allowed the Union to be presented in teleological terms. Their courses incorporated significant elements of Scottish history. Chairs of Scottish history were founded at Edinburgh in 1901 and Glasgow in 1913, but their holders shared the general unionist orientation. By 1914, therefore, university history courses embodied a distinctive Scoto-British historiography, which was a significant factor in the formation of British identity among the Scottish middle classes; there were many European parallels to this state-oriented form of national history. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article examines the introduction of organized sports into the curricula of Scottish private and public schools in the late 19th and early 20th century. The process was initiated and maintained by school administrators whose strong personalities gave them great influence in Scottish education, and who were inspired themselves by the philosophy of English private schools which stressed the moral importance of sports to the development of the student. Sports are considered as part of an overall transformation in Scotland's education to reflect a British identity closely associated with its Empire at the expense of strictly Scottish national characteristics.

Catholic libraries are an under-researched area in library history. That of St Mary's College, Blairs, the Scottish national junior seminary from 1829 to 1986, is noted for its historical importance and holdings, but how the library operated within the seminary is less known. The library had an important place in seminary life from the beginning, with dedicated accommodation within the college, ongoing purchases, and the central place of reading in the daily routine. However, staffing was inconsistent and few administrative records survive for the library, giving the impression that it was managed informally. The distinction was made between the historical college library and the students' working library. The former grew to be a significant collection, reflecting the education and resilience of Scottish Catholics at home and abroad following the Reformation, but it had little use for junior seminarians. The student library had a direct role in supporting the boys' education, showing wider-ranging, more modern subjects as the twentieth century progressed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]