The challenges of evaluating conservation education across cultures

The present and future of biodiversity conservation embraces an interdisciplinary approach. In particular, the acceptance that social factors are a key component to understanding the challenges species and habitats face. Indeed, it is this growing understanding that may lead us to effective solutions to these challenges. Education is the most‐used method employed to try and influence people and their communities. As such, it is widely utilized within conservation programmes around the world. However, the evaluation of educational outcomes is newish to the field of conservation, where so‐called hard science has often dominated. This is, in part, the result of a lack of expertise with such evaluation methods in the conservation field but may also be because differences in culture require more flexibility in an evaluation approach. Here, a flexible approach to evaluation is presented; that is, the use of drawings in the style of Personal Meaning Mapping. In particular, the authors suggest this is one way of transcending the boundaries of culture, language and literacy.