Evaluation in environmental education is fairly nascent despite decades-long attention to its importance. In setting the context for future chapters appearing in this special issue of the "Journal of Evaluation and Program Planning," attention is devoted to the political circumstances associated with retrenchment in the public sector and increased…

The grounded experiences of two participatory evaluation case studies indicate that, when action is the desired outcome of an evaluation, somewhat less rather than more diversity of stakeholder participation is actually what is wanted. A narrowing of diversity is not necessarily in violation of democratic participatory aims. (SLD)