Listening Closely through Embedded Evaluation: Children’s Ecological Narratives and Co-Learning in Place

Abstract: As conservation organizations and environmental education programs develop more equitable and inclusive practices, they also seek innovations in approaches to evaluation that reflect shifting goals. One partnership—between a land trust, elementary school, and university along the Central Coast of California—centers relationships and connection, with the land and with each other. This field report presents an embedded evaluation framework from this partnership that integrates ethnographic observations, children’s drawings, and interviews, and creates space for all participants to shape goals, support co-learning, and build multi-species relationships and reciprocity.