The formula funding controversy at the national endowment for the arts

This article explores how nonprofit organizations respond to proposed changes in the relationship between the government and the nonprofit sector using a case study of the “formula funding” controversy at the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA). The article shows how powerful notions of who should get to decide permeate and continually transform the funding debate, making public interest reforms of the process extremely difficult. The author concludes by suggesting that the victories the arts field can claim in defending the current practice of peer panel review at the NEA will turn out to be Pyrrhic victories, ultimately weakening the claim of the nonprofit arts on public resources.     

A note on the Condorcet Jury Theorem with supermajority voting rules

Social Choice and Welfare -     

TEACHING TOOLS: COOPERATIVE LEARNING IN ECONOMICS

Cooperative learning is a structured, systematic instructional technique in which students work together in small groups toward a common goal. We demonstrate the effectiveness of cooperative learning with an illustrative example for teaching the labor supply curve. Recommendations for introducing the technique, forming groups, the instructor's role during group work, grading and extensions of cooperative learning to other topics are discussed.     

Developmental Career Counseling with Teenage Parents

Although teenage parenthood is recognized by many counselors as a developmental identity crisis, it rarely has been viewed as a developmental career crisis. This article suggests developmental career assessment and counseling procedures for use with teenage parents.     

Adolescent Peer Groups and Social Identity

This study investigated processes by which adolescents form positive evaluations of their peer groups. One‐hundred and fifteen male and female adolescents aged 14–15 years made a series of comparisons between their own peer group (the ingroup) and a group of which they were not a member (the outgroup). In line with the predictions of social identity theory ( Tajfel and Turner, 1979 ), participants behaved consistently in ways which favoured the ingroup: compared to the outgroup, the ingroup was associated to a greater extent with positive characteristics (e.g. being fun, nice, and honest) and to a lesser extent with negative characteristics (e.g. being ignorant, unfriendly, and boring). Their responses were also related to levels of identification with the ingroup: at higher levels of identification participants reported more favourable evaluations of their groups. These findings extend earlier research and show how the benefits derived from group membership in adolescence are in part realised through intergroup processes.     

Community Involvement: Opportunities and Challenges in Socializing Adults to Participate in Society

The concluding article of this issue devoted to community involvement considers the unique perspective offered by each article on this topic in this issue, yet does so in the context of the commonalities among them. Most important of these commonalities, perhaps, is that all of the articles address, to some degree, the question of how adults can best be socialized to develop a habit of community participation. Some articles consider this question of encouraging community involvement in educational settings, while others consider the question in more general settings. Some articles focus on key conceptual processes, whereas others concentrate on practical issues in promoting involvement. Finally, virtually all of the articles consider the benefits of community involvement; some of the articles also explore the downside to efforts to promote community involvement.