ABSTRACT
At a Wingspread conference on service-learning and evaluation, Stephen Hamilton of Cornell University suggested that evaluation was the systematic collection of data to answer specific questions about a program. Michael Patton (1990), national expert on assessment, defines evaluation as “any effort to increase human effectiveness through systematic data-based inquiry” (11). While most people agree on the systematic collection of data, there is much debate over why and how evaluation should be completed. The purpose of this chapter is to explore some of the critical issues in evaluation and to discuss the unique relationship between service-learning and evaluation. What follows is a discussion of the different approaches to evaluation, an examination of the underlying assumptions that separate ser-vice-learning from more traditional education, evaluation implications based on those differences, and, finally concluding examples of how evaluation can be implemented with service-learning programs.
