Bhola, H. S.

(b. 1932, Lahore, Undivided India). Ph.D. Education, The Ohio State University; M.A. History and English Literature, B.A. Hons. Physics and Mathematics, Punjab University, India.

Bhola is Professor of International and Comparative Education at Indiana University and teaches courses in comparative education, education policy, social change, and evaluation. He is a former employee of and consultant to the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) and has been a consultant to several national governments, including China and Tanzania. He has been invited to speak, conduct evaluation training, and perform evaluations in numerous countries, including Tanzania, Kenya, Malawi, Zambia, Zimbabwe, South Africa, Namibia, and several Asian countries. He has gained international recognition for his research in educational systems evaluation and adult literacy, with a focus on the interconnections of planned change and systematic evaluation.

His career in evaluation began with a perceived need for systematic feedback from behavioral and social interventions within programs of adult literacy (and [Page 33]adult education) for community development in India during the 1950s and early 1960s. From 1963 to 1965, as a graduate student at The Ohio State University, Bhola was influenced by Egon G. Guba, who, with others at the time, was shaping and promoting the development of educational evaluation theory and practice. As a UNESCO senior literacy field expert in Tanzania, East Africa (1968–1970), Bhola introduced the concept of internal evaluation to the field workers and supervisors engaged in UNESCO-UNDP (UNESCO–United Nations Development Program) work-oriented adult literacy programs. Bhola's paper “Making Evaluation Operational Within Literacy Programs” attracted considerable attention within the multinational UNESCO-UNDP project, and it was later published. His recent work has been related to constructivist approaches to evaluation, the special structures of policy evaluation, and the need to focus on evaluative accounts rather than stand-alone evaluation studies. Another important theme of his recent work is the globalization of evaluation models and approaches around the world and, concomitantly, the necessity for careful and self-conscious contextualization of evaluation practice in each culture and community.

Bhola's Evaluating “Literacy for Development”: Projects, Programs and Campaigns, published by UNESCO, is available in English, French, Spanish, Arabic, and Persian. In 2003, he was awarded the American Evaluation Association Myrdal Award for outstanding contributions to evaluation practice.