Accounting and social movements: An exploration of critical accounting praxis

A central tenet of critical accounting research maintains the need to challenge and change existing social relations; moving towards a more emancipated and equitable social order. The question of how critical accounting research upholds this principle has been intermittently discussed. This paper aims to engage with, and further, this discussion by contributing to research linking accounting information to social movements. The paper reviews the literature on accounting and social movements, central to which is the work of Gallhofer and Haslam; using their work as a departure point we discussion the nature of accounting information and focus on social movement unionism (SMU). Drawing on Bakhtinian dialogics and classical Marxism we develop an alternative theoretical framework to analyse an example of accounting information and social movements, covering a trade union pay dispute. The paper concludes with a discussion of the class nature of accounting information, including an exploration of the implications for accounting praxis and agency in the struggles for an emancipated world. The paper builds on the limited amount of existing work in this area; exploring the ‘class belongingness’ of accounting information and developing an understanding which can help guide the praxis of critical accounting researchers

Integrating user design and formal models within PVSio-Web

Creating formal models of interactive systems has wide reaching benefits, not only for verifying low-level correctness, but also as a tool for ensuring user interfaces behave logically and consistently. Despite this, tools for designing user experiences and tools for creating and working with formal models are typically distinctly separate systems. This work aims to bridge this divide by allowing the generation of state machine diagrams and formal models via a simple, interactive prototyping tool that mirrors the basic functionality of many modern digital prototyping applications

Rationale for and Examples of Internet-Based, Software, and Hardware Technologies That Can Be Integrated into the Science Classroom

The global market and workplace today demand knowledge and skills associated with technology. More often than not the responsibility to provide students with the exposure to technology is left up to the classroom teachers, whether or not the teachers themselves are experienced with it. The natural intersection of science and technology is a recognized element of science education in 21st century classrooms. This thesis project presents some of the more accessible forms of technology to understand and offer assistance to both pre-service and in-service teachers as well as suggested methods for integrating technology in a science classroom. While technology integration can be straightforward, teachers still need introduction to and experience with its implementation. It is suggested that teacher preparation programs devote time in analyzing current curriculum and teaching practices for ways to incorporate more opportunities for intentional partnerships of science and technology. Some of the recommendations culled from the research analysis, specifically directed to science teachers, includes suggestions for teacher education programs on incorporating technology requirements into standard education classes, developing technology-specific mini how-to classes that on website development and podcast creation, and courses that involve both the introduction to and the use of handheld computers and probeware. (Appendices list instructional websites created for teachers; some with a direct science focus.

Automating Event-B invariant proofs by rippling and proof patching

This work is supported by EPSRC grants EP/H024204/1, EP/E005713/1, EP/M018407/1 and EP/J001058/1.The use of formal method techniques can contribute to the production of more reliable and dependable systems. However, a common bottleneck for industrial adoption of such techniques is the needs for interactive proofs. We use a popular formal method, called Event-B, as our working domain, and set invariant preservation (INV) proofs as targets, because INV proofs can account for a significant proportion of the proofs requiring human interactions. We apply an inductive theorem proving technique, called rippling, for Event-B INV proofs. Rippling automates proofs using meta-level guidance. The guidance is in particular useful to develop proof patches to recover failed proof attempts. We are interested in the case when a missing lemma is required. We combine a scheme-based theory-exploration system, called IsaScheme [MRMDB10], with rippling to develop a proof patch via lemma discovery. We also develop two new proof patches to unfold operator definitions and to suggest case-splits, respectively. The combined use of rippling with these three proof patches as a proof method significantly improves the proof automation for our evaluation set.Publisher PDFPeer reviewe