Creating “Fugitive Spaces” in Educator Professional Development: A Critical Case Study of Transformative Adult Learning for Equity and Inclusion

Despite policy efforts over the last few decades to address racial disparities in education, often in the form of educator professional development, racism still manifests in educator practice, and Whiteness is often centered in the very processes designed to address exclusion. While research exists critiquing how systemic racism and Whiteness are reproduced in educator professional development, there is far less empirical exploration of more transformative adult learning practices to advance equity and inclusion. Utilizing critical adult learning, critical race theory, critical whiteness studies, and sociocultural transformative learning theory, this study identifies a potential “fugitive space” in educator professional development designed to disrupt this reproduction of Whiteness. This critical case study of transformation utilized culturally responsive interviews of 16 participants and document review to understand how both participants of color and White participants describe transformation in this program and the challenges transforming educators face. This study revealed that participants described transformation as a deeply personal and embodied experience and the creation of critical community as essential. However, racial differences emerged in how the transforming “self” was described. Participants of color described a transforming self that was reintegrated, validated, and empowered as a “leader” with a sense of agency. Most White participants described a new understanding of a “White” self—one that was newly uncomfortable, conflicted, and made mistakes—leading them to a sense of “responsibility,” but not yet an identity as a “leader” filled with a clear sense of agency in equity and inclusion efforts. Lastly, participants described the challenges of an increasingly fugitive-like life they experience beyond the program year as transforming educators advocating for equity and inclusion in their school communities. These findings offer new considerations for educator professional development in districts, higher education, and the broader community seeking to foster transformation both in educators and the education system

Hazard Relative Navigation: Towards safe autonomous planetary landings in unknown hazardous terrain

Many successful landings have been performed on celestial bodies such as Mars, the Moon, Venus and others. All of these had in common that they were designed such that they had to land in regions, which were supposedly free of any hazards or that a certain level of risk was accepted. However, while rocks and other geological features are nightmares of any landing engineer they are the dream targets of scientists. Therefore, currently landing-site selection is a trade-off between the scientists’ wishes and the engineers’ fears. To bring the engineering capabilities closer to what the scientists desire, landing capabilities need to be advanced. Therefore, this work tries to answer the research question: Are autonomous safe landings in hazardous and potentially unknown environments possible? which lead to the following two sub-questions: 1. How can a landing vehicle autonomously assess the safety of a potentially unknown and unmapped landing site? 2. Howcan a landing vehicle ensure a safe touch downavoiding autonomously detected hazards?Astrodynamics & Space Mission

Terrain Relative Navigation for Planetary Landing using Stereo Vision: Measurements Obtained from Hazard Mapping

As a result of new aviation legislation, from 2019 on all air-carrier pilots are obliged to go through flight simulator-based stall recovery training. For this reason the Control and Simulation division at Delft University of Technology has set up a task force to develop a new methodology for high-fidelity aircraft stall behavior modeling and simulation. As part of this research project, the development of a new high-fidelity Cessna II simulation model, valid throughout the normal, pre-stall flight envelope, is presented in this paper. From an extensive collection of flight test data, aerodynamic model identification was performed using the Two-Step Method. New in this approach is the use of the Unscented Kalman Filter for an improved accuracy and robustness of the state estimation step. Also, for the first time an explicit data-driven model structure selection is presented for the Citation II by making use of an orthogonal regression scheme. This procedure has indicated that most of the six non-dimensional forces and moments can be parametrized sufficiently by a linear model structure. It was shown that only the translational and lateral aerodynamic force models would benefit from the addition of higher order terms, more specifically the squared angle of attack and angle of sideslip. The newly identified aerodynamic model was implemented into an upgraded version of the existing simulation framework and will serve as a basis for the integration of a stall and post-stall model.Astrodynamics & Space Mission