Includes bibliographical references.

The new public management and evaluation / Nigel Norris, Saville Kushner -- Constitutive effects of performance indicator systems / Peter Dahler-Larsen -- Poetry, performance and pathos in evaluation reporting / Leslie K. Goodyear -- Evaluating complex public policy programmes: reflections on evaluation and governance from the evaluation of children's trusts / Chris Husbands -- Programme evaluation in a dynamic policy context / Paul Mason -- School self-evaluation / Ron Ritchie -- Changing contexts and relationships in educational evaluation / Katherine E. Ryan -- On the importance of revisiting the study of ethics in evaluation / Thomas A. Schwandt -- New public management and evaluation under decentralizing regimes in education / Christina Segerholm -- Evaluation and trust / Nigel Norris.

In our reforming public institutions it sometimes feels as though the very ground of social and political contracts is shifting. The economic revolution embraced by neo-liberals and neo-conservatives is paralleled by a governance revolution in those same institutions which were designed to protect us from historical swings and ideological roundabouts. Our public institutions - for the most part the public sector and its professional groups - in the eyes of some provided stability, while for others they were a brake on change. Now, however, they have become conduits for political change and reform. We live in an institutional world now dubbed the New Public Management (NPM). In this new landscape evaluators might have to think afresh about how to position ourselves in relation to institutional ethics and the pursuit of social justice. In this volume contributors give us a start in thinking through such a repositioning, some within the values framework of NPM, others as external observers.

Description based on print version record.