Biography

Thomas A. Schwandt is Professor of Education at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (UIUC) where he holds appointments in the Department of Educational Psychology, the Department of Educational Policy Studies, and the Unit for Criticism and Interpretive Theory. He also serves as chairperson of the Department of Educational Psychology. In 2003 he was named University Distinguished Teacher-Scholar and in 2006 received the campus award for Excellence in Graduate and Professional Teaching. He is the author of Evaluation Practice Reconsidered (Peter Lang, 2004); Evaluating Holistic Rehabilitation Practice (Oslo, Kommuneforlaget, 2004); Dictionary of Qualitative Inquiry (Sage, 1997, 2001, 2007), and with Edward Halpern, Linking Auditing and Meta-evaluation (Sage, 1988); he has co-edited Evaluating Educational Reforms: Scandinavian Perspectives (Information Age Press, 2003) with Peder Haug, Exploring Evaluator Role and Identity (Information Age Press, 2002) with Katherine Ryan, and Knowledge Production: The Work of Educational Research in Interesting Times (Routledge, forthcoming) with Bridget Somekh. In addition, he has authored more than sixty papers and chapters on issues in theory of evaluation and interpretive methodologies that have appeared in a variety of books and journals. In 2002 he received the Paul F. Lazarsfeld Award from the American Evaluation Association for his contributions to evaluation theory. He is currently a member of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences (Division of Behavioral and Social Sciences and Education) Standing Committee on Social Science Evidence for Use.