Making evaluation work for the practitioner evaluator: experience from the field of environmental education

Drawing on work from environmental education, evaluation, and practitioner research, this paper presents a discussion of programme evaluation practices from the practitioner’s perspective. This discussion is informed by a meta-evaluation conducted on ten-years (2008–2018) of data collected from a suite of place-based learning programmes delivered by a charity in Ireland. Analysis of the data available allowed for an evaluation of the programmes in question, and these were then further analysed to provide the meta-evaluation. Key findings and discussions from the analysis include the impact of time constraints on evaluation; evaluation as part of organisational culture; strengths/weaknesses of evaluations led by practitioner evaluators; and opportunities provided by meta-evaluation in directing organisational change. This paper serves as a valuable resource for researchers and practitioners as it provides a framework to support future evaluations led by practitioner evaluators.