Article Info The purpose of this scholarly essay is to offer a number of logics of academic arguments as follows: leadership as contested/seductive theories, leadership as an organizing activity, and leadership as praxis. Each academic argument presents its own theoretical, communicative and practical challenges, often necessitating a beginning again in search of leadership's ontological status; that is, in what sense is leadership real? Methodologically, the authors rely on asking pragmatic and constructivist questions (i.e. what difference does it make?) regarding problematic relationships among diverse researchers and between themselves and practitioners. With some amount of courage and a great deal of ignorance, the authors jump into the rabbit hole of relational sociology, leaving answers as next steps to the wisdom of our readers.
Maternal inheritance of mitochondria creates a sex‐specific selective sieve through which mitochondrial mutations harmful to males but not females accumulate and contribute to sexual differences in longevity and disease susceptibility. Because eggs and sperm are under disruptive selection, sperm are predicted to be particularly vulnerable to the genetic load generated by maternal inheritance, yet evidence for mitochondrial involvement in male fertility is limited and controversial. Here, we exploit the coexistence of two divergent mitochondrial haplogroups (A and B2) in a Neotropical arachnid to investigate the role of mitochondria in sperm competition. DNA profiling demonstrated that B2‐carrying males sired more than three times as many offspring in sperm competition experiments than A males, and this B2 competitive advantage cannot be explained by female mitochondrial haplogroup or male nuclear genetic background. RNA‐Seq of testicular tissues implicates differential expression of mitochondrial oxidative phosphorylation (OXPHOS) genes in the B2 competitive advantage, including a 22‐fold upregulation of atp8 in B2 males. Previous comparative genomic analyses have revealed functionally significant amino acid substitutions in differentially expressed genes, indicating that the mitochondrial haplogroups differ not only in expression but also in DNA sequence and protein functioning. However, mitochondrial haplogroup had no effect on sperm number or sperm viability, and, when females were mated to a single male, neither male haplogroup, female haplogroup nor the interaction between male/female haplogroup significantly affected female reproductive success. Our findings therefore suggest that mitochondrial effects on male reproduction may often go undetected in noncompetitive contexts and may prove more important in nature than is currently appreciated.
Recent theory suggests that tropical terrestrial arthropods are at significant risk from climate warming. Metabolic rate in such ectothermic species increases exponentially with environmental temperature, and a small temperature increase in a hot environment can therefore have a greater physiological impact than a large temperature increase in a cool environment. In two recent studies of the neotropical pseudoscorpion, Cordylochernes scorpioides, simulated climate warming significantly decreased survival, body size and level of sexual dimorphism. However, these effects were minor compared with catastrophic consequences for male fertility and female fecundity, identifying reproduction as the life stage most vulnerable to climate warming. Here, we examine the effects of chronic high-temperature exposure on epigenetic regulation in C. scorpioides in the context of naturally occurring variation in mitochondrial DNA. Epigenetic mechanisms, including DNA methylation, histone modifications and small non-coding RNA (sncRNA) expression, are particularly sensitive to environmental factors such as temperature, which can induce changes in epigenetic states and phenotypes that may be heritable across generations. Our results indicate that exposure of male pseudoscorpions to elevated temperature significantly altered the expression of >60 sncRNAs in testicular tissue, specifically microRNAs and piwi-interacting RNAs. Mitochondrial haplogroup was also a significant factor influencing both sncRNAs and mitochondrial gene expression. These findings demonstrate that chronic heat stress causes changes in epigenetic profiles that may account for reproductive dysfunction in C. scorpioides males. Moreover, through its effects on epigenetic regulation, mitochondrial DNA polymorphism may provide the potential for an adaptive evolutionary response to climate warming.
PrefaceIn this essay, we want to be clear from the beginning that Israeli Research Professors Benoliel and Berkovich are engaged in a noble struggle: that is, they explicitly want to make intelligent failure a viable school leadership strategy. But to do so, intelligent failure must also become a viable research objective. Practitioners share professionally with researchers the desires for good theory to be practical, equitable and heuristic. Yet, as Benoliel and Berkovich openly admit, their intervention framework borrows from fields outside education, including design thinking, change management, implementation science and, of course, organizational learning. And, most importantly, measures of success are defined by external judges. Still, we must ask, can using noneducational theories transform schooling and research practices away from fear of retribution and toward intelligent failure (i.e. learning individually and institutionally from errors)? This is just the first of many questions we have in our commentary on intelligent failure as a reciprocal construct: theory and practice.Why reciprocal? Our reading of their model is as educational leadership researchers ourselves. As such, it makes sense to follow in the footsteps of Kurt Lewin, Chris Argyris and Karl Weick. But what we should point out is that educational researchers are not held accountable for every sentence or paragraph pertaining to our findings. Peer review is not the same as being held accountable by external bodies for decisions, actions, etc. The world inhabited by our research subjects and participants is not equivalent to our research world. It would be a different story if all our research studies were mandated to be designed as collaborations with practitioners. They are not.Instead, there is an unacknowledged asymmetry of power. If not of power per se, then at least an asymmetric relationship based on positionality in a school system versus a university. Researchers often conclude with findings as recommendations, suggestions or plain out advice (i.e. mostly unsolicited) to talented practitioners. When has the reverse ever been the case? Therefore, a central question for any theoretical framework regarding schools and school leaders is: how will it be beneficial to practitioners? And, our take away from reading the articles in this special issue is that researchers need to be far more critically reflexive in order for intelligent failure to become a shared research/practice objective (see Figure 1 below).This special issue reveals an international collection of articles focused on educational leadership and the concept(s) of failure from many organizational perspectives. For example, using international Programme for International Student Achievement (PISA) data, Liu (in this volume) found that teacher leadership and a governing board in educational leadership had direct and indirect positive effects on student achievement. Yet, these findings are less common in low-socioeconomic schools that are more prone to being labeled failures. ...
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