Böcker utgivna av Common Ground Publishing

In the midst of an epochal shift in the communications environment, rapid cultural change and transformations in knowledge, there is an urgent need for bold educational responses. While responsibility for educational resourcing belongs to the broader community, the extent and quality of pedagogical change ultimately rests with teachers. Student learning is dependent on teachers developing knowledge and pedagogical practices. Central to our educational response to the changed environment is teacher professional learning.This scholarly book draws on research which investigated the impact on teachers of their engagement with the New London Group's multiliteracies theory. Four Australian teachers of primary school students committed themselves to exploring multiliteracies theory and to putting their learning into practice in diverse classroom settings.Anne Cloonan, then a literacy policy and project officer at a state Education Department, explores the context, processes and impact of film-driven participatory action research action learning, in which the teachers researched their learning and practice over a period of eight months. She describes new ways of working shoulder to shoulder with teachers to develop resources and policy advice while deepening their professionalism. She offers contextualised examples of teachers extending their print-based literacy pedagogies to incorporate multimodal literacy practices.This book will be of interest to teachers, educational consultants, policy makers, and researchers concerned with: agentive collaborative teacher learning; innovative policy and resource development; enhancing teachers' professionalism; and the operationalisation of multiliteracies theory.

The social arrangements with which we are familiar work fairly well for most of us most of the time. We work, we earn, we pay taxes. We engage professionals when we need their advice. We expect that there will be doctors whose expertise can be relied upon if we are ill, that there will be schools staffed with knowledgeable teachers and courts presided over by fair judges. We vote for politicians who offer policies we favour. We require government to provide us with security, protect our freedom and assist those of us who cannot help themselves.These social arrangements rest on some shared assumptions and values. They assume that people are, by and large, free, self-determining persons who respect each other's rights and independence, and co-operate rationally and productively with each other. Our social arrangements are challenged when this assumption does not hold. What policies should government have in place for people who are not independent, or not rational, or not co-operative, or not productive? If, by some catastrophe, through accident, disability or mental illness, you became such a person, how should you be dealt with by professionals and government services? If, on the other hand, you are a professional, how should you go about making decisions for clients who are not well placed to make decisions for themselves? Are there standards of professional ethics that can deal with this situation? Are there ethical standards that can be applied by managers of service organizations, or by policy writers, or by government officials? Are there ethical standards that concerned citizens should demand of government, of service organizations and of professionals who provide for vulnerable people?Drawing on the stories of people with disabilities and their service providers, Paul Jewell explores ethical theories, tests their practical application, and offers strategies essential to practitioners, managers, policy-makers and professionals who provide services to people with disabilities.

This edited book is the result of collaboration between five countries in the Asia Pacific Region. It is auspiced by Childwatch International, a global research network.It explores the socio-cultural context of children's participation in the five countries, in response to the obligations on these countries, as signatories to the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child. While the legal mandating of participation has significant implications for children's lives and adult-child relations, research in this area has been limited, particularly cross culturally.

This book provides students and scholars with a collection of thought provoking contributions focusing on the nexus of globalization and responsibility. With a concise introduction to the globalization debate and an overview of business corporations' role in globalization's multifaceted processes, the essays in the volume address a wide range of pressing issues concerning challenges and opportunities for responsible business and management. Some provocative arguments in the essays touch upon the dimension of morality and the issue of potential and actual (in)justice resulting from the global economic development. Incorporating respect for human rights into corporate governance and making it a worldwide standard practice is of pivotal importance. To this end, contributors in this book argue that corporate governance should be made more transparent by expanding accountants' roles to include a report on corporate activities relating to human rights protection. But despite the various fundamental challenges for business and management, such as addressing how to combat poverty and injustice, it is also argued with reference to Spinoza's Ethics that profit-seeking in business should not be regarded as inherently immoral or unethical. Other essays in the book further explore the complex social-psychological foundation and conditions for responsible individual behavior in relation to business ethics. Drawing on Maslow's famous "Hierarchy of Needs" the psycho-moral foundation of self-transcendent behaviour is further explored as the difficulty of taking the perspective of "Others" is discussed. The book ends with a positive note suggesting that the egoistic utility maximization seeking motive, the bedrock of the conceptualization of the homo oeconomicus, may in fact provide the key for ensuring responsible individual behavior if it is embedded in the idea of love.

Our interdependence with plants entails symbiosis that is not only biological but also cultural, social, and linguistic. Posthuman Plants addresses our diverse entanglements with plants in everyday life through the prisms of posthumanist, multispecies, ecocritical, and ecocultural theory. This volume asks: how does the reconfiguration of human "being" as inherently permeable affect our perceptions of and relationships to plants-those "others" that have been regarded historically as passive elements of the landscape and constructed as the mute foils of animality? This book contributes to the ever-increasing debate about how we perceive plants and their influence on what it means to be human, more-than-human, and other-than-human. It argues that reconceptualizing the botanical world requires seeing, feeling, and understanding plants as intelligent, active, and sentient agents. Posthuman Plants is divided into five sections: Affect and Reciprocity, Heritage and Digitality, Art and Vegetality, Poetry and Vegetality, and Plants and the Senses. Although some of its content is strongly focused on the vegetal life of the southwest of Australia where the author resides, other countries, bioregions, places, and contexts figure into the analysis. The chapters are presented as essays on diverse subjects, all organized around the common strand of rethinking plants through culture, art, and poetry. In re-imagining the vegetal, Posthuman Plants draws from ethnographic, auto-ethnographic, historical, and literary sources and develops plant-based theoretical models that blur disciplinary boundaries. This broadly-ranging work will be of interest to international audiences, especially researchers in the fields of environmental studies and ecological humanities.

This book is the first of its kind to specifically look at the issues of how disability is culturally placed and contextualized in different societies. Within, it covers a range of professional, inter-professional, and international perspectives of culture and disability. It also begins to look at the cultural considerations when researching culture and disability. These cutting edge chapters written by leading practitioners, researchers, and academics raise questions and provide answers to some of the critical issues around disability and culture. In their writings, they highlight current and seminal work on this topic while providing clarity on the meaning of disability and culture in a way that opens up debate and provides resolution. This book provides a positive outlook on the topic and makes it accessible to not only academics and professionals, but also service users and students alike. The authors throughout this book largely agree that those living with disability need to be provided for in society and that this is achieved through a cultural understanding of disability in society and an understanding of self. The importance of their comments relating to these concepts are to be noted.

Concise but comprehensive, Jonathan Ochshorn's Structural Elements for Architects and Builders explains how to design and analyze columns, beams, tension members and their connections. The material is organized into a single, self-sufficient volume, including all necessary data for the preliminary design and analysis of these structural elements in wood, steel, and reinforced concrete. Every chapter contains insights developed by the author and generally not found elsewhere. Appendices included at the end of each chapter contain numerous tables and graphs, based on material contained in industry publications, but reorganized and formatted especially for this text to improve clarity and simplicity, without sacrificing comprehensiveness. Procedures for design and analysis are based on the latest editions of the National Design Specification for Wood Construction (AF&PA and AWC), the Steel Construction Manual (AISC), Building Code Requirements for Structural Concrete (ACI), and Minimum Design Loads for Buildings and Other Structures (ASCE/SEI).This thoroughly revised and expanded second edition of Structural Elements includes an introduction to statics and strength of materials, an examination of loads, and new sections on material properties and construction systems within the chapters on wood, steel, and reinforced concrete design. This permits a more comprehensive overview of the various design and analysis procedures for each of the major structural materials used in modern buildings. Free structural calculators (search online for: Ochshorn calculators) have been created for many examples in the book, enabling architects and builders to quickly find preliminary answers to structural design questions commonly encountered in school or in practice.

Invented in Australia, the remarkable men's shed movement has spread from the back blocks of Australia to reach a total of more than 1,400 Men's Sheds in diverse countries on opposite sides of the world.This book provides a fascinating, carefully evidenced and definitive story of men's sheds for the first time. It is a book and movement whose time has come. Many nations are struggling to meet the needs and interests of men beyond the workplace. Over two decades, the men's shed movement has mushroomed from the ground up to become a strongly networked international movement, not only in Australia, but now Ireland, the UK, New Zealand, and continental Europe.How and why this has happened and what the evidence and research means for service providers, communities and the men in the men's sheds movement is thoroughly explored. Lead author, Professor Barry Golding, Federation University Australia, is the respected world expert in the field, being a patron of the Australian Men's Shed Association and the winner of the coveted Ted Donnelly Award in 2013 for his "outstanding contribution to the men's shed movement."

Atwood is, needless to say, one of the most acclaimed authorial voices of our time: Atwoodian critics unite in saying that Margaret Atwood offers an intriguing and compelling body of writing as well as a rich epitext. This study which explores her voice and its representations, leads us on a journey to question the very nature of "a voice" and its different meanings according to critics and poets. Atwood''s literary work (more than forty books - a dozen novels, numerous collections of poetry, children''s books, and countless essays) is attributed a unique voice-print. Atwood''s epitextual voice is also described as typically Atwoodian although it comprises a wide range of voices to be heard through many different media and occasions (public appearances, countless radio and television programs, many webpages, published articles and even documentaries, not to mention her transcribed voice in press articles or on blogs and web sites). Exposing "the voice that speaks" (in poetry or in fiction) and giving this voice-persona many guises are trademarks of Atwood''s poetic writing. From The Circle Game to The Door, Atwood plays with a range of images representing the poetic voice, giving the reader representations of an incarnated voice with unflattering "physical" characteristics. The present volume argues that these poetical representations are connected with the persona''s struggle in voicing her identity. Furthermore, while many critics highlight an interplay of voices in Atwood''s writing, Professor Evain stipulates that, beyond the vocal plurality, the reader distinctly hears the voice of a persona-soloist who sings out her particular truth. Lastly, this study questions the connections between Atwood''s poetic voices and representations, her works of poetry and fiction and, finally, her "autobiographics" and epitext.

Information design empowers people to attain their goals. It is centred on users, based on evidence, and oriented to results. It contributes to a vast range of activities that people engage with every day, from simple things such as understanding phone bills or operating a washing machine, to more complex ones such as managing emergency response web based systems, controlling a power plant, or flying an airliner. Good quality information design facilitates these tasks.Experts with several decades of practice alongside younger designers report on research and design methods and present case studies in practice and education, discussing processes, audiences, objectives, and results. The twenty eight authors come from diverse fields of design practice, but also from the study of cognition and language, forming a volume that deals with theory, history, practice, and education.This book is for document designers and writers, for communication managers and computer programmers, for design educators and social scientists, for people that in their everyday professional activity are connected with the planning or crafting of communications aimed at informing or instructing. In business, government, or education we live constantly challenged by the volume of information flow. This book demonstrates how leaders in the field make information attractive, accessible, understandable, and usable.

Museums and communities - what are the connections? Who leads and who follows?This book draws on the experiences of the author as the director of the Cobb+Co Museum in Toowoomba, Australia since its opening in 1987. It charts the changing dynamics between the museum and its community that have provided enormous benefits to both the institution and the community itself.The engagement process and subsequent outcomes between museums and their stakeholder communities are often neglected by both practitioners and academics. Much has been written and spoken about the need for museums to engage with and be responsive to their communities, but many museums, in practice, still remain indifferent to their key stakeholders.Museums can play substantial leadership roles within communities. This occurs when the relationship between the museum and its community becomes entrenched with shared values. These values can facilitate social, cultural, and economic benefits for both museums and their communities. This book explores these values and their expression within a regional museum context.

Thankfully, another publication from the creative Queensland Community Development 'crowd'... Indeed, what would we do without them in a rather sedate and seemingly stagnant Australian publishing landscape in so far as Community Development is concerned...? What I most particularly appreciate is the editors' and contributors' ongoing attempts at creating 'living theory' informed by their ongoing practice and their holding on to the spiritual, democratic, relational and dialogical principles for which their work has become known. The book therewith documents its authors' continuing attempts at developing good practical and reflective support for their ongoing social change efforts, something our local community development scene could very well do with..."Jacques Boulet, editor New Community Quarterly.

Bringing together creative people to develop fresh, new, innovative ideas and to propel a business forward is challenging work. It isn''t enough to simply follow policy and procedure, or to gently nudge creative people toward success. It takes strength, courage, and insight into how creative people work, live, and respond.Creative Leadership expert Anthony Lake unravels the mystery of the creative employee by using simple yet elegant cases in business and the arts to frame this practical guide for Leading the Creative Mind. Born from his executive work with arts organizations, his consulting, and his leadership research, Lake creates a series of exercises designed to strengthen skills for leading creative individuals. The focus is on four key pillars for success:1. Reflecting and Engaging Sensitively with Creative People2. Designing Effective Creativity Teams3. Developing and Addressing Real Challenges4. Fixing Ailing Work GroupsThis is a guide for keeping inspired, balancing innovation with effective communication, and collaborating from a position of leadership.