You Cannot Fix What You Cannot Find! An Investigation of Fault Localization Bias in Benchmarking Automated Program Repair Systems

in The 12th IEEE International Conference on Software Testing, Verification and Validation (ICST-2019) (2019, April 24)

Properly benchmarking Automated Program Repair (APR) systems should contribute to the development and adoption of the research outputs by practitioners. To that end, the research community must ensure ... [more ▼]

Properly benchmarking Automated Program Repair (APR) systems should contribute to the development and adoption of the research outputs by practitioners. To that end, the research community must ensure that it reaches significant milestones by reliably comparing state-of-the-art tools for a better understanding of their strengths and weaknesses. In this work, we identify and investigate a practical bias caused by the fault localization (FL) step in a repair pipeline. We propose to highlight the different fault localization configurations used in the literature, and their impact on APR systems when applied to the Defects4J benchmark. Then, we explore the performance variations that can be achieved by "tweaking'' the FL step. Eventually, we expect to create a new momentum for (1) full disclosure of APR experimental procedures with respect to FL, (2) realistic expectations of repairing bugs in Defects4J, as well as (3) reliable performance comparison among the state-of-the-art APR systems, and against the baseline performance results of our thoroughly assessed kPAR repair tool. Our main findings include: (a) only a subset of Defects4J bugs can be currently localized by commonly-used FL techniques; (b) current practice of comparing state-of-the-art APR systems (i.e., counting the number of fixed bugs) is potentially misleading due to the bias of FL configurations; and (c) APR authors do not properly qualify their performance achievement with respect to the different tuning parameters implemented in APR systems. [less ▲]

"You see that in the movie!" - How children engaged in a joint activity simultaneously address each other and the camera operators during a video observation.

Scientific Conference (2013, November 22)

You should never be alone. Social work crossing borders and cultures in child protection and disability rights. Experiences from a current multinational research project.

Presentation (2021, May)

Social service providers in the Greater Region report that many children in need of special care and social assistance find themselves in cross-border situations. The legal regulations and practices for ... [more ▼]

Social service providers in the Greater Region report that many children in need of special care and social assistance find themselves in cross-border situations. The legal regulations and practices for the care of children and adolescents can vary considerably from country to country. This can cause delays, breaks or deterioration in the quality of support and sometimes irreversibly worsen the child's situation. Depending on the situation, diagnoses and access to social, medical-social or legal services can change considerably. The EURQUA project deals with cross-border child protection and disability rights within a multinational perspective. [less ▲]

"You want to undress us to press your case": Negotiating claims to religious truth in a secularizing state

Scientific Conference (2021, November 17)

For decades, Luxembourg funded its recognized religious communities; recently, with a goal of greater secularization, the state made major changes (and cuts) to its funding scheme. This move revived ... [more ▼]

For decades, Luxembourg funded its recognized religious communities; recently, with a goal of greater secularization, the state made major changes (and cuts) to its funding scheme. This move revived simmering tensions in the Jewish community, comprised of one Orthodox and one Liberal synagogue and represented to the state by a single Orthodox-led administrative body (la communauté israélite du Luxembourg, or CIL). Emboldened by growing membership and fearing a loss of their already-precarious autonomy and financial support, the Liberal congregation has begun pushing for representation on the CIL, which the Orthodox congregation in turn resists. In the process, Orthodox leadership is forced to reflect on their own practices and values in sometimes uncomfortable ways. As they jostle for control of the CIL, each side makes claims to truth, authenticity, and authority based on drastically different ethics and visions of the future for Luxembourg and its Jewish community. In board meetings, general assemblies, and conversations, old conflicts around the 'right' kind of Jewish life and current and future shape and needs of the Jewish community are rearticulated as the two congregations debate who can and should be the state's interlocutor. Based on 31 months of fieldwork, this paper explores how a reorganization of state administrative control reignited an old struggle within Luxembourg's Jewish community and how two congregations with different histories, ethical projects, and anticipated futures fight to define Jewishness, community, and a good Jewish life and to maintain (or gain) the right to represent Judaism to the Luxembourgish state. [less ▲]

Young @ Heart. Choir Singing, Health and Age

in Steklacs, Janos (Ed.) International HEART 2016 Conference Health – Economy – Art (2016, March 11)

Young @ Heart. Choir Singing and Health The culture of amateur choral music has a long tradition in most countries of Europe. Choral societies grew up in the middle of the 19th century, and members were ... [more ▼]

Young @ Heart. Choir Singing and Health The culture of amateur choral music has a long tradition in most countries of Europe. Choral societies grew up in the middle of the 19th century, and members were young enthusiasts. Following the end of WW II glee clubs seemed to experience its renaissance that lasted until the seventieth. The decline of choir singing began, at least in my country – Luxembourg, about two decades ago, and today choir singing has become a pastime for elder people. In the past, the social aspect of corporate music-making in the area of amateur activities was an important argument of people coming together. Today, the claim for shared cultural activities is replaced by social media and networks, which gain in acceptance already among the older generation. Singing has become a matter of elderly persons. Health issues become more important: Common singing furthers concentration, overcomes isolation, is a continuous support for manifold forms of therapies. My lecture will give an insight into a leisure activity that combines hard work and musical performance based on decades of experience and will also present a famous example: the “Young@Heart-Chorus”. [less ▲]

The Young and the Elderly at Risk: Individual outcomes and contemporary policy challenges in European societies

Book published by Intersentia (2015)

The current retrenchment of the welfare states is buffering the growing demographic and economic pressures in European countries at the expense of the young and the elderly. However, both investment in ... [more ▼]

The current retrenchment of the welfare states is buffering the growing demographic and economic pressures in European countries at the expense of the young and the elderly. However, both investment in the young, which determines a society’s future, and providing public support for the elderly, the most deserving needy group, are seen as musts. This book encompasses a selection of empirical studies reflecting on when and why the young and the elderly are at risk in several (mostly Western) European countries. Contributions in the book examine the educational achievement and the labor market entry of youths, particularly those who have a migration background, the poverty risk experienced by the elderly, especially if they are also immigrants and/or women, the pension outcomes of former cross-border workers, the simulated consequeces of a recent pension benefit reform as well as those of a potential reform including financial assets and housing wealth in old-age income protection, and finally the extent, and possible erosion, of the support for government providing child-care and protecting the elderly. Preface – Wim van Oorschot Introduction – Ioana Salagean, Catalina Lomos & Anne Hartung 1. Does ethnic capital contribute to the educational outcomes of individuals with Turkish background in Europe? – Sait Bayrakdar 2. Young adults at risk in Germany: The impact of vocational training on the ethnic gap at labour market entry – Anne Hartung 3. Poverty among elderly immigrants in Belgium – Line De Witte, Sofie Vanassche & Hans Peeters 4. Integrating life course and pension policy perspectives: The case of poverty among elderly women – Hans Peeters & Wouter de Tavernier 5. Including assets in comparative old age poverty research: How does it change the picture? – Rika Verpoorten 6. The social and budgetary impacts of the recent social security reform in Belgium – Gijs Dekkers, Saskia Weemaes, Nicole Fasquelle & Raphael Desmet 7. Cross-border social security coordination, mobility of labour and pension outcomes – Irina Burlacu & Cathal O'Donoghue 8. Do self-interest, ideology and national context influence opinions on government support for childcare? A multilevel analysis – Wouter de Tavernier 9. Individual attitudes towards welfare states responsibility for the elderly – Nathalie Schuerman Rejoinder: Is intergenerational solidarity under pressure? Comparative analyses of age cleavages in opinions about government support for the young and the old – Tim Reeskens & Wim van Oorschot [less ▲]

Young children as actors of institutionallanguage policies and practices in day carecentres

in European Journal of Applied Linguistics (2020), 8(2), 157-180

As children’s agency in influencing institutional language practices is often not carefully reflected in early childhood education curricula, the objective of this paper is to offer meaningful insights ... [more ▼]

As children’s agency in influencing institutional language practices is often not carefully reflected in early childhood education curricula, the objective of this paper is to offer meaningful insights about how institutional language policies are both reproduced and transformed by children’s everyday use of language. For this purpose, we will combine conceptual resources from social theory, sociolinguistics and childhood studies in order to analyse children’s linguistic behaviour by applying a structure-agency perspective as a relational approach. Drawing on data from ethnographic field research within institutional day care centres in Luxembourg, our findings demonstrate that the status of children as actors in institutional language practices is strongly connected to institutional policies as a structural condition. However, this does not mean that children just enact these language policies, because they are actors of both maintaining, undermining and alternating them. In this respect, especially the translanguaging of children and caregivers plays a crucial role in the Luxembourgish context as it allows to build a bridge between the official institutional language policy and the individual linguistic repertoires. Considering the goal of establishing a plurilingual environment in early childhood education which now is paramount to the educational language policy of the Luxembourgish government, this article suggests that translanguaging practices should be considered as one of the key starting points to create a plurilingual ecology in and through everyday practice in the day care centres. [less ▲]

Young children capitalising on their entire language repertoire for language learning at school. RiPL Summary of Kirsch, C. (2018) in Language, Culture and Curriculum.

E-print/Working paper (2020)

Young children's agency in learning novel languages in multilingual environments

Presentation (2019, September 05)

The concept of child agency is highly discussed in the fields of humanities, sociology and education. Whereas children were previously conceptualised as incomplete adults or social becomings in the adult ... [more ▼]

The concept of child agency is highly discussed in the fields of humanities, sociology and education. Whereas children were previously conceptualised as incomplete adults or social becomings in the adult world, children’s agency has undergone a paradigm shift in recent decades. Pioneer early childhood scholars such as Prout and James (1990) and Corsaro (2005) have argued that children are reflexive, agentive and social beings, who construct and re-construct childhood and actively shape socialization processes. Similarly, scholars in the emerging field of preschool bilingual education have stressed children’s active role in language learning processes and in shaping language policies and practices through their own languaging and interactions (Bergroth & Palviainen, 2017; Boyd & Huss, 2017; Schwartz, 2018). These scholars define children’s bilingual agency as the ‘socioculturally mediated capacity to act, as it is reflected in the children’s communicative acts’ (Ahearn, 2001; Bergroth & Palviainen, 2017). From the same sociocultural perspective on learning, educationalist researchers show that preschool children’s agency is embedded in institutional and interactional orders (Huf 2013, Hilpöö et al., 2016). Young children can express a bilingual agency by linguistically supporting each other (Mourão, 2018); discussing and evaluating their own and others’ language practices (Almér, 2017); demonstrating a metalinguistic awareness (Schwartz, 2018); and even by modifying language policy-in-practice (Boyd & Huss, 2017). Moreover, studies suggest that opportunities to use languages flexibly in the classroom may give children some agency over their language use and facilitate their language learning (García & Kleifgen, 2018). Nevertheless, findings on young children’s translanguaging and agency are still scarce, particularly in multilingual contexts involving more than two languages (Kirsch, 2017; Schwartz, 2018). In light of these current trends and gaps in the fields of language learning and education, the present doctoral study gives insights into young children’s agency in learning novel languages in Luxembourg. In this trilingual country, a new law on multilingual education was passed in 2017. This transition from a monolingual to a multilingual language policy was motivated by recent results of national studies which showed that non-Luxembourgish children scored below average in primary school (MENJE, 2017). As the new multilingual language policy strives for social justice and equal opportunities, early childhood practitioners are now required to teach Luxembourgish to the children, familiarize them with French and value their home languages. This doctoral thesis is part of the research project MuLiPEC (Kirsch, 2016-2019) which provided seven practitioners in two formal and two non-formal early childhood education settings with an extensive professional training and individual coaching in multilingual pedagogies. Whereas the main research team examined the practitioners’ changing multilingual practices, knowledge and beliefs, I focused on the children in these settings. I investigated eight two- to four-year-old children’s languaging and agentive behaviour over the period of a year. The present paper focuses on four focal children in two formal education settings. In the précoce, a non-compulsory preschool year for three-year-olds, one Portuguese- and one Cape Verdean Creole-speaking girls learned Luxembourgish as a second language. In the compulsory preschool for children aged four to five, two Spanish-speaking boys had previously learned features of other languages (French, Mallorquí, English) and encountered Luxembourgish as a novel language. Following research questions are addressed: - In what ways and to what extent do the four children deploy their linguistic and non-linguistic repertoires in interaction with peers and teachers? - In what ways and to what extent do the children express a multilingual agency in language learning? - In what ways is the children’s multilingual agency socioculturally embedded? The findings should contribute to the understanding of children’s agency in learning novel languages in early childhood education settings implementing multilingual pedagogies. This longitudinal study drew on multidimensional qualitative methods, including observations, fieldnotes, videography, informal discussions and semi-structural interviews with the practitioners. I visited the two schools bi-weekly for three consecutive days during one academic year. The data presented in this paper stems from 34 days of observations during daily interactions and planned language learning activities; 277 video-recordings in lengths ranging from one to forty minutes; and eight semi-structured interviews. Adopting an emic perspective, the data were firstly examined with a thematic analysis following Braun and Clarke (2006). I coded the fieldnotes and the transcriptions of the video-recordings and classified these codes into different forms of languaging and interactions. As the study adopted a sociocultural perspective on language learning, selected interactions were additionally analysed line-by-line using a ‘sociocultural theory approach to conversation analysis’ inspired by Seedhouse (2005). The analysis proceeded inductively and deductively being influenced by the literature review. Consequently, I identified the children’s agentive behaviour during interactions with their peers and practitioners. The coding and classification were extensively discussed with Schwartz and Kirsch in the process of collaboratively writing an article on child agency. As a result, the emergent themes were called: active participation (e.g. engaging through translanguaging in the morning circle; creatively reproducing the adults’ communication strategies); and language management (e.g. taking a leading role in shaping activities in a specific language; refusing to speak a language). Finally, the observational data and interviews were triangulated (Flick, 2011). To assure accuracy and trustworthiness, the findings were discussed and compared in meetings with further international researchers in the fields of multilingualism and early childhood education. The research project complies with the ethics principles of the National Data Protection Regulatory Agency and the University of Luxembourg. Moreover, the study followed the recognised ethical principles of the British Educational Research Association. The participants gave their informed consent and their anonymity is strictly respected in presentations and publications. The data showed that the children were not passively socialised into the Luxembourgish language, but actively shaped this process by challenging norms through different types of agentive behaviour during interactions and activities (Schwartz 2018). Firstly, the children actively participated through non-verbal communication (e.g. pointing, doing actions); the use of other languages (e.g. home languages or languages picked up in a crèche); and the repetition of formulaic speech (e.g. Luxembourgish, French) after practitioners and peers. Moreover, they creatively reproduced (Corsaro, 2005) the practitioners’ language use (e.g. labelling and asking questions) during peer interactions. Furthermore, they all showed a pragmatic sensitivity (e.g. adapting their languaging to their interlocutors, asking for translations) and one child a cross-linguistic sensitivity (e.g. comparing words in different languages). Secondly, the children’s involvement went beyond active participation as they not only monitored their own language use (e.g. translanguaged to mediate meaning), but managed to shape the language use of their peers and practitioners. This agentive behaviour was characterised by engaging in peer teaching (e.g. giving corrective feedback); shaping and changing activities (e.g. transforming a monolingual activity into a multilingual one); refusing to speak a language (e.g. the home language in favour of the dominant language). By transforming or resisting language practices, the children made choices to act against expectations and norms (Fogle 2012). This finding presumes that these very young children were to some extent conscious about prevailing norms in the settings (Bergroth & Palviainen, 2017). Finally, the triangulation of the data showed that the children’s multilingual agency was shaped by the teachers’ own agency and language practices, which in turn were shaped by their conceptualisations of the children (e.g. competent versus incompetent), the official language policies (e.g. monolingual versus multilingual) and the professional development and coaching they were given by the research team (Kirsch & Aleksić, 2018). References: Ahearn, L. (2001). Language and agency, Annual Review of Anthropology, 30: 109-137. Almér, E. (2017). Children’s beliefs about bilingualism and language use as expressed in child-adult conversations, Multilingua, 36(4): 401-424. Bergroth, M., & Palviainen, Å. (2017). Bilingual children as policy agents: Language policy and education policy in minority language medium Early Childhood Education and Care, Multilingua, 36(4): 375-399. Boyd, S., & Huss, L. (2017). Young children as language policy-makers: studies of interaction in preschools in Finland and Sweden, Multilingua, 36(4), 359-373. Braun, V., & Clarke, V. (2006). Using thematic analysis in psychology, Qualitative Research in psychology, 3(2): 77-101. Corsaro, W. (2005). Collective Action and Agency in Young Children’s Peer Cultures. In J. Qvortrup (ed.), Studies in Modern Childhood: Society, Agency, Culture (pp. 231-247). Hampshire: Palgrave MacMillen. Flick, U. (2011). Triangulation - Eine Einführung (3. aktualisierte Auflage). (Reihe Qualitative Sozialforschung). Wiesbaden: Verlag für Sozialwissenschaft. Fogle, L. W. (2012). Second language socialization and learner agency: Talk in three adoptive families. Bristol: Multilingual Matters. García, O., & Kleifgen, J.A. (2018). Educating Emergent Bilinguals: Policies, Programs, and Practices for English Learners (Second edition). New York: Teachers College Press. Hilppö, J., Lipponen, L, Kumpulainen, K., and Rainio A. (2016). Children’s sense of agency in preschool: a sociocultural investigation, International Journal of Early Years Education, 25(2): 157-171. Huf, C. (2013). Children’s agency during transition to formal schooling, Ethnography and Education, 8(1): 61-76. Kirsch, C. (2017). Translanguaging practices during storytelling with the app iTEO in preschools, Translation and Translanguaging in Multilingual Contexts, 3(2): 145-166. Kirsch, C., & Aleksić, G. (2018). The Effect of Professional Development on Multilingual Education in Early Childhood in Luxembourg, Review of European Studies, 10(4): 148-163. Mourão, S. (2018). Play and Peer Interaction in a Low-Exposure Foreign Language Learning Programme. In M. Schwartz (ed.). Preschool Bilingual Education: Agency in Interactions between Children, Teachers, and Parents (pp. 313-342). Dordrecht: Springer. Prout, A., and James, A. (1990). A new paradigm for the sociology of childhood? Provenance, promise and problems. In A. James and A. Prout (eds.). Constructing and Reconstructing Childhood. Contemporary Issues in Sociological Study of Childhood (pp. 7-34). London: Routledge Falmer. Schwartz, M. (2018). Preschool Bilingual Education: Agency in Interactions between Children, Teachers, and Parents. In: M. Schwartz (ed.), Preschool Bilingual Education: Agency in Interactions between Children, Teachers, and Parents (pp. 1-26). Dordrecht: Springer. Seedhouse, P. (2005). Conversation Analysis and language learning, Language Teaching 38(4):165-187. [less ▲]

Young Children’s Ethnifying Practices: An Ethnographic Research in a Daycare Center in Berlin

Scientific Conference (2011, August 21)

I will present findings of an ethnographic research that was conducted in a daycare center in Berlin with 22 children from 4 to 6 years of age. Despite being born and raised in Germany, in the dominant ... [more ▼]

I will present findings of an ethnographic research that was conducted in a daycare center in Berlin with 22 children from 4 to 6 years of age. Despite being born and raised in Germany, in the dominant discourse most of them would be represented as ‘migrant children’ or ‘children with migrant background’. They thus come to function as ‘the Other’ in the construction of a normative version of ‘German children’. Family origins, language and physical appearance act as important criteria in this ethnifying of children. Embedded within this discursive framework my research focus however is on the perspectives of the children themselves and how they participate in the social construction of ethnic identities. Participant observation and symbolic group interviews were employed to explore the children’s practical strategies in dealing with ethnified identity ascriptions in everyday peer interactions. In line with the ‘new’ sociological study of childhood (e.g. James & Prout 1990) I perceive of children as competent social actors who do not just passively receive and imitate adult conceptions of the social order but actively and skillfully join in the construction of the social world. The ethnographic data show that children as young as 4 are able to use ethnic ascriptions as a ‘social tool’ (Van Ausdale & Feagin 2001) in their peer interactions. The broad range of practical and situational processes of differentiation and evaluation, of inclusion and exclusion, can be interpreted along a continuum from reproducing to challenging dominant constructions of belonging and ‘the Other’. I argue that ethnicity is not a pre-given fact but practically accomplished and negotiated in children’s social interactions. Thus, the research contributes to our understanding of children’s agency and competence as well as of the relationality, provisionality and context-dependence of children’s identities. [less ▲]