Environmental education & evaluation; an eleventh hour reconciliation

Abstract

This paper attempts to isolate and explore some central issues in environmental education and 'its evaluation. Initially it develops a background perspective on the origin of environmental education and highlights some of the factors which led to a growing concern for evaluation. Issues arising from this are then discussed before an emergent, context specific, research-based approach to evaluation is derived; an approach that could evolve from existing 'intuitive judgement' evaluation. This perspective on evaluation is based on the view that it is nalve to restrict our view of environmental education to any particular communications programmes, and also untenable to evaluate these by merely attempting to measure behaviour change.