Evaluation's Second Act

Abstract

Imagine a world where evaluation is a social epidemic . . . where individuals, groups, organizations, and communities are constantly learning about and from evaluations. The author believes that we are well on our way to creating a “global cascade” of evaluative thinking and practice. Evidence of this phenomenon can be seen in the field's increasing commitment to evaluation capacity building and participatory evaluation approaches and the expanding applications of technology for accessing and disseminating information. If the old saying is “The second act is the best” then we might ask ourselves, “How can evaluation realize its potential for making a difference in our increasingly complex and changing world?” The author argues that addressing today's critical evaluation theory, practice, and policy issues requires us to understand the ways in which evaluation facilitates learning, how evaluators can maximize learning from and about evaluation, and what it would mean if the evaluation profession was a sustainable learning community.