Books published by Common Ground Publishing

Humans learn by nature, from the moment of each person's birth and for thewhole of their lives. Most learning is incidental to living. Some learning, however, is by design. This learning we call "education".Learning by Design explores the relationships between the widening circles ofpedagogy, curriculum and education. It examines the changing social context ofeducation today and the ways in which teaching and learning might respond tothese changes. Along the way, the book redefines the key terms of the debateabout the nature of learning, moving in the direction of a socio-cultural theory of the conditions of learning.Learning by Design also speaks in a practical voice. It describes an experimentin which teachers write up their curriculum using a scaffold that highlights its underlying learning sequence and pedagogical architecture, thus making thisexplicit to themselves, other teachers and learners.The book tells the story of a number of groups of teachers participating in this experiment in Australia (Victoria, Queensland and Australian Capital Territory) and Malaysia. It tells of their aspirations and fears, and their successes and failures in the quest to find more effective ways of teaching and greater engagement for their learners. The journey takes them into new territories where they become learners themselves, discovering fresh dimensions of a rapidly changing profession. The result is that the process of designing and managing student learning becomes more consciously 'by design'-mindful, premeditated, reflective and shared.

Immersive Theatre: Engaging the Audience is a collection of essays that look to catalogue the popularization of “immersive” theatre/performance throughout the world; focusing on reviews of works, investigations into specific companies and practices, and the scholarship behind the “role” an audience plays when they are no longer bystanders but integral participants within production. Given the success of companies like Punchdrunk, Dream Think Speak, and Third Rail Projects, as current examples, immersive theatre plays a vital role in defining the theatrical canon for the twenty-first century. Its relatively “modern” and new status makes a collection like this ripe for conversation, inquiry, and discovery in a variety of ways. These immersive experiences engage the academy of “the community” at large, going beyond showcasing prototypical theatre artists. They embrace the collaborative necessity of society and art—helping to define the “stories” we tell and the WAY in which we tell them.

Given the rapidly changing global higher education landscape, the systematic internationalization of higher education offers the potential for many positive outcomes and benefits for an increasingly interconnected and globalized citizenry, students, faculty, and institutions.  Additionally, with more and more competitive pressures being put on institutions of higher education, a continually increasing number of universities and colleges within a variety of national contexts are actively looking at the potential of internationalization.  Within the context of these complex global tensions, the internationalization of higher education has emerged as a balanced approach to addressing the rapidly shifting competitive landscape of higher education. This edited collection will help you answer the following key questions:Why is understanding the internationalization of higher education important?How is globalization changing the context and shifting the dialogue surrounding the internationalization of higher education?Given the ever-increasing importance of contextualization, what are the country and region-specific considerations in internationalizing higher education?This edited collection provides a comprehensive introduction to globalization and higher education and explores its increasingly important role within a shifting higher education landscape, presenting a wide range of cross-disciplinary research in an organized, clear, and accessible manner.  This book will be informative to higher education scholars and administrators seeking to understand the role and implementation of the internationalization of higher education in response to a shifting higher education landscape and increasingly globalized world.

Immersive Theatre: Engaging the Audience is a collection of essays that look to catalogue the popularization of “immersive” theatre/performance throughout the world; focusing on reviews of works, investigations into specific companies and practices, and the scholarship behind the “role” an audience plays when they are no longer bystanders but integral participants within production. Given the success of companies like Punchdrunk, Dream Think Speak, and Third Rail Projects, as current examples, immersive theatre plays a vital role in defining the theatrical canon for the twenty-first century. Its relatively “modern” and new status makes a collection like this ripe for conversation, inquiry, and discovery in a variety of ways. These immersive experiences engage the academy of “the community” at large, going beyond showcasing prototypical theatre artists. They embrace the collaborative necessity of society and art—helping to define the “stories” we tell and the WAY in which we tell them.

Transdisciplinary projects are messy, complicated, and exhilarating. They stretch the collaborators, sometimes uncomfortably, beyond the predictable, expected, and routine ways of engaging with research. Making public the private tensions of “ordinary” cultural expectations associated with singlehood, marriage, and motherhood, the authors used a kinesthetic analysis of social-science qualitative data to create an evening-length professional dance concert. Ordinary Wars: Doing Transdisciplinary Research is an exploration of the project, from its inception through its current state. It focuses on providing readers with an understanding of the ways in which working collaboratively on a transdisciplinary project is both incredibly challenging and unpredictably rewarding. Our project has been fraught with fears of distortion and dishonesty, punctuated with questions of truth, fiction, acts of commission, and acts of omission. It has also been accompanied by groundbreaking ideas, feelings of triumph, and exponential growth.In this book, we invite readers “backstage,” exposing our discomfort, missteps, confusion, successes, and lessons learned. We explore how ordinary practices (i.e., disciplinary paradigms, social expectations of femininity) constitute complex, yet barely visible battlegrounds on which wars are often fought in silence. We offer readers a vision of the larger project as a means of affecting change in the academy, our respective fields, and in our communities through making visible what we have come to understand are extraordinary Ordinary Wars. 

The Ekphrastic Turn: Inter-art Dialogues is the first volume of the CompLit InterArt book series in the New Directions in the Humanities book imprint. Placing emphasis on the storytelling aspects of intermedial and transmedial configurations, this collection studies the role of art in the construction of cultural processes, helping build a bridge between theoretical academic research and social practices. It brings together scholarship in intercultural studies by drawing on social narrative theory and semiotics as analytical tools to expand on the models of comparative literature. It also explores how communicated experiences and the stories behind them bring about social change and empowerment.