Managing Program Evaluation: Towards Explicating a Professional Practice: New Directions for Evaluation, Number 121

This issue explores the many issues in understanding managing evaluation: an omnipresent, if often invisible process guiding evaluation studies, evaluators, other workers and evaluation units. Contributing chapters first define and then illuminate these matters through four case studies.
The central questions in the domain of managing are: OL {list–style:disc}P:{margin–left 60px}Should the evaluation field recognize managing as a core professional expertise? Should it promote this by legitimizing the preparation of experts and expertise? What should the curriculum, pedagogy, and learning sites be?
The authors suggest beginning foci, curricula, and pedagogy in managing evaluation and hope to stimulate reflection and conversation within our profession on how best to manage evaluation in these various contexts and multiple layers.
This is the 121st volume of the volume of the Jossey–Bass quarterly report series New Directions for Evaluation, an official publication of the American Evaluation Association.