Schwandt, Thomas A.

(b. 1948, Chicago, Illinois). Ph.D. Inquiry Methodology, Indiana University, Bloomington; B.A. English Literature, Valparaiso University.

Schwandt is Professor of Education in the Division of Quantitative and Evaluative Research Methodologies of the Department of Educational Psychology and affiliated faculty in the Unit for Criticism and Interpretive Theory at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. Previously he held faculty positions in the Department of Medical Education, College of Medicine, University of Illinois, Chicago, and the School of Education, Indiana University, Bloomington; served as part-time Research Professor at the National Center for Comprehensive Rehabilitation Research and Development, Bodø, Norway, and visiting faculty at Roskilde University, Denmark. He has lectured and taught extensively throughout Norway, Sweden, and Denmark.

His primary contributions to the field of evaluation center on exploring the relevance of practical hermeneutics for the theory and practice of evaluation and for reuniting moral, political, and technical evaluation discourses. His work has also contributed considerably to the clarification of philosophical assumptions [Page 387]underlying various forms of qualitative or interpretive methodologies used in evaluation. Primary influences on his evaluation work include Egon Guba, Robert Stake, and Ernest House, and the work of Lee Cronbach, Carol Weiss, and Donald Campbell has been influential as well. More broadly, the primary intellectual influences for his scholarship are Hans-Georg Gadamer, Charles Taylor, and Richard J. Bernstein.

He is the author of the Dictionary of Qualitative Inquiry, Evaluation Practice Reconsidered, Evaluating Holistic Rehabilitation Praxis, and Linking Auditing and Metaevaluation (with Edward Halpern). With K. E. Ryan, he has edited Exploring Evaluator Role and Identity and with P. Haug, Evaluating Educational Reform: Scandinavian Perspectives. The recipient of several teaching awards and a member of the editorial boards of New Directions for Evaluation, the American Journal of Evaluation, and Qualitative Inquiry, he received the American Evaluation Association Paul F. Lazarsfeld Award in 2002 for his contributions to evaluation theory.