Teacher fabrication as an impediment to professional learning and development: the external mentor antidote

This paper reports findings from a study of the work of 'external mentors' associated with three programmes of support for the professional learning and development (PLD) of secondary science teachers in England. Focusing on outcomes from analyses of data derived from interviews with 47 mentees and 19 mentors, the paper supports and extends existing research on the construction and maintenance of fabrications in schools, and identifies omissions in the evidence base relating to teacher PLD. It is argued that the kinds of fabrications revealed by the teachers interviewed for this research present a serious impediment to their opportunities for school-based PLD, and that the deployment of external mentors (i.e. those not based in the same schools as the teachers they support) can provide a potentially powerful antidote to this. A number of implications for policy and practice in teacher professional learning and development are discussed. Amongst these, it is argued that more teachers should have the opportunity to access external support for their PLD, and that policy makers and head teachers should seek to reduce the degree to which teachers' 'performance' is observed, inspected and assessed

Towards mentoring as feminist praxis in early childhood education and care in England

Following our contribution to a study of mentoring in seven European countries, we explored epistemological and ontological inconsistencies within mainstream mentoring systems and their regulated practice in England. We considered how feminist mentoring praxis can unsettle conceptualisations of mentoring relationships and challenge inequity in the early education systems and the practice of teaching young children. Predominantly female, early childhood educators suffer from low status in England, and their working lives may be controlled and policed through inequitable systems. On entering the workforce, trainees encounter a reductionist policy milieu where mentoring structures and normative assessment arrangements contribute to inequity. Mentors play pivotal roles in inducting trainees into their worlds of work with young children. Mentoring relationships can determine whether trainees accept the status quo. Principles derived from feminist praxis enable mentors to practise an ‘engaged pedagogy’, co-constructing knowledge, subverting hierarchies and contesting taken-for-granted aspects of policy and practice

Semen parameters of fertile Guinea pigs (Cavia porcellus) collected by transrectal electroejaculation

The guinea pig, as a livestock species, is still developing and growing throughout Peru and neighboring countries, as reflected by its increasing export since 2000. However, the selection of proven fertile males is tedious due to the absence of seminal parameter standards and the lack of safe semen collection techniques. Thus, pregnancy detection or live births are required for males’ selection. The purpose of this study was to describe the qualitative and quantitative semen parameters of fertile guinea pig males, to set reference values, and to validate a novel electroejaculation technique for the species. Semen was collected at weekly intervals from sixteen fertile males. Four transrectal electroejaculations were performed per male with 95% successful collections, yielding 39 viable semen samples. Seminal characteristics were as follows: pH 7.0 ± 0.13; ejaculate volume 0.67 ± 0.55 mL; sperm motility 90.81 ± 6.64%; sperm concentration 36.7 ± 28.41 × 106 sperm/mL; sperm count 20.09 ± 17.56 × 106 sperm/ejaculate; percentage of abnormal morphology 18.26 ± 8.52%; and percentage ubiquitinated spermatozoa 5.57 ± 6.28%. These values will serve as a reference to detect best breeding and infertile males rapidly. The described techniques are reproducible by commercial producers