Beyond redemption? Locating the experience of adult learners and educators

O'Sullivan's critique of what he terms 'redemptive' approaches to adult education is based on its 'vanguardism, imited reflexivity and circumscribed student agency' (2008, p.21). Such ideas and discourses are at work in adult education influenced by the pervasive influence of Catholic social teaching in Ireland that O'Sullivan describes. Just how deeply rooted this redemptive phenomenon is amongst religious and secular Irish educators has been critically explored by Hussey (1999, p.44) based on his experience in community theatre

The Seventh Data Release of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey

This paper describes the Seventh Data Release of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS), marking the completion of the original goals of the SDSS and the end of the phase known as SDSS-II. It includes 11663 deg^2 of imaging data, with most of the roughly 2000 deg^2 increment over the previous data release lying in regions of low Galactic latitude. The catalog contains five-band photometry for 357 million distinct objects. The survey also includes repeat photometry over 250 deg^2 along the Celestial Equator in the Southern Galactic Cap. A coaddition of these data goes roughly two magnitudes fainter than the main survey. The spectroscopy is now complete over a contiguous area of 7500 deg^2 in the Northern Galactic Cap, closing the gap that was present in previous data releases. There are over 1.6 million spectra in total, including 930,000 galaxies, 120,000 quasars, and 460,000 stars. The data release includes improved stellar photometry at low Galactic latitude. The astrometry has all been recalibrated with the second version of the USNO CCD Astrograph Catalog (UCAC-2), reducing the rms statistical errors at the bright end to 45 milli-arcseconds per coordinate. A systematic error in bright galaxy photometr is less severe than previously reported for the majority of galaxies. Finally, we describe a series of improvements to the spectroscopic reductions, including better flat-fielding and improved wavelength calibration at the blue end, better processing of objects with extremely strong narrow emission lines, and an improved determination of stellar metallicities. (Abridged)Comment: 20 pages, 10 embedded figures. Accepted to ApJS after minor correction

SDSS-III: Massive Spectroscopic Surveys of the Distant Universe, the Milky Way Galaxy, and Extra-Solar Planetary Systems

Building on the legacy of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS-I and II), SDSS-III is a program of four spectroscopic surveys on three scientific themes: dark energy and cosmological parameters, the history and structure of the Milky Way, and the population of giant planets around other stars. In keeping with SDSS tradition, SDSS-III will provide regular public releases of all its data, beginning with SDSS DR8 (which occurred in Jan 2011). This paper presents an overview of the four SDSS-III surveys. BOSS will measure redshifts of 1.5 million massive galaxies and Lya forest spectra of 150,000 quasars, using the BAO feature of large scale structure to obtain percent-level determinations of the distance scale and Hubble expansion rate at z<0.7 and at z~2.5. SEGUE-2, which is now completed, measured medium-resolution (R=1800) optical spectra of 118,000 stars in a variety of target categories, probing chemical evolution, stellar kinematics and substructure, and the mass profile of the dark matter halo from the solar neighborhood to distances of 100 kpc. APOGEE will obtain high-resolution (R~30,000), high signal-to-noise (S/N>100 per resolution element), H-band (1.51-1.70 micron) spectra of 10^5 evolved, late-type stars, measuring separate abundances for ~15 elements per star and creating the first high-precision spectroscopic survey of all Galactic stellar populations (bulge, bar, disks, halo) with a uniform set of stellar tracers and spectral diagnostics. MARVELS will monitor radial velocities of more than 8000 FGK stars with the sensitivity and cadence (10-40 m/s, ~24 visits per star) needed to detect giant planets with periods up to two years, providing an unprecedented data set for understanding the formation and dynamical evolution of giant planet systems. (Abridged)Comment: Revised to version published in The Astronomical Journa

Automating expert-defined tests: a suitable approach for the Medical Device Industry?

Testing is frequently reported as a crucial stage in the software development process. With traditional approaches acceptance testing is the last stage of the process before release to customer. Acceptance Test Driven Development (ATDD) promotes the role of an expert customer in defining tests and uses tool support to automate and execute these tests. Here the challenge is to support such an expert in the reuse of existing documentation. This paper details an experiment in a generic domain while outlining plans for development of an automated testing model that could assist medical device companies to adhere to regulatory guidelines by providing them with a fully traceable testing artifacts

AnnoTestWeb/Run: Annotations based Acceptance Testing

Testing is frequently reported as a crucial stage in the software development process. With traditional approaches acceptance testing is the last stage of the process before release. Acceptance Test Driven Development (ATDD) promotes the role of an expert customer in defining tests and uses tool support to automate and execute these tests. This abstract outlines a tool, AnnoTestWeb/Run aimed at expert customers specifying acceptance tests with reuse of existing documentatio

Developing acceptance tests from existing documentation using annotations: An experiment

The importance of good software testing is often reported. Traditionally, acceptance testing is the last stage of the testing process before release to the customer. Unfortunately, it is not always appropriate to wait so long for customer feedback. Emerging agile methods recognise this and promote close interaction between the customer and developers for early acceptance testing, often before implementation commences. Indeed, Acceptance Test Driven Development (ATDD) is a process that uses customer interaction to define tests and tool support to automate and execute these. However, with existing tools, tests are usually written from new descriptions or rewritten from existing documentation. Here, the challenge is to allow developers and customers to annotate existing documentation and automatically generate acceptance tests without rewrites or new descriptions. This paper introduces the related ideas and describes a particular experiment that assesses the value of using annotated text to create acceptance tests

Acceptance Test-Driven Development by annotation of existing documentation

Testing is frequently reported as a crucial stage in the software development process. With traditional approaches acceptance testing is the last stage of the process before release. Acceptance Test Driven Development (ATDD) promotes the role of an expert customer in defining tests and uses tool support to automate and execute these tests. This paper outlines a tool, AnnoTestWeb/Run aimed at expert customers specifying acceptance tests through reuse of existing documentation. Also outlined is a planned evaluation that includes industrial collaboration aimed at considering the impact of this tool on reuse of existing documentatio

Making Hope and History Rhyme: Reflections on Popular Education and Leadership following a Visit to Highlander

This article draws on our backgrounds as adult educators in Ireland and our experience at Highlander in 2014. We review our development as critical educators, exposed to deep inequalities in Irish society. We explore role of popular education in fostering social change, beginning with the commitment to equality and freedom, whereby, we produce emancipatory knowledge with students and participants. This learning process is more explicitly political and collective than individual psychological concepts of learning. The Highlander experience provided the opportunity to interrogate related assumptions that underpin the concept of leadership, pointing toward a more collective and political framework. The article uses feminist critical theories as lenses for this interrogation, holding that equality and freedom are mutually constitutive principles of critical practice. Popular educators foster critical thinking and reflection. The Other’s Tools, drawing on the precept that traditional thinking reinforces the status quo. These critical thinking tools are vital to question the assumptions that power and control in society as individualized or de-politicized. We take this learning into our practice in Ireland

Developing acceptance tests from existing docum. using annot.: An Experiment, ICSE Works

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