Abstract
Introduction
Thomas Schwandt can be considered a unique, critical philosophical voice in the field of evaluation. His wide reading, integrity, friendship, and scholarship have been an enduring source of joy and inspiration for many scholars and practitioners, including me. I met Schwandt for the first time in 1990 during an exchange program between the Erasmus University and Indiana University in Bloomington, and we remained friends and kept in touch over the years.
Schwandt identified himself as a teacher, more so than an expert or scholar, and he was a very fine teacher who tried to work in the German tradition of Bildung. Although he was trained as a theologian, he entered the field of evaluation. He enriched the field of evaluation with thoughts from the humanities including hermeneutics, phenomenology, politics, ethics, and the arts. Given his interest in continental philosophy, Schwandt felt very much at home in Europe, and he was a regular visitor of the European Evaluation Society.
His critical and thought-provoking questions challenged the conventional framing of evaluation, and he was one of the leading scholars who developed a vision on what he later called “post-normal evaluation.” In this vision, evaluation was a particular form of pedagogy embedded within practices of teachers, medical doctors, carers, and urban planners: not standing above them, but facilitating deliberative dialogues with multiple stakeholders to find and reflect on the goodness of their practice.
Schwandt stated that evaluation is not a technical but a value-laden practice, and that evaluators should therefore not hide behind a mask of value neutrality, but instead be open about the values and voices they want to promote in their practice. The important question, then, becomes not “Did a program reach its goals?,” but “Given what we know and what we can imagine is possible, what should we do now?” It is this question that still triggers the evaluation community after so many years because it contradicts well-rehearsed notions about evaluation as an impartial, value-neutral, and expert-driven enterprise. Schwandt was an advocate of democratic pluralism, complexity thinking, deliberative pedagogy, practical reasoning (phronesis), and social justice throughout his career. This was not just a matter of scholarly and intellectual debate. He embodied and lived by these values and actively brought them into practice. This made him not only a respected scholar but also a great person and a fine teacher.
This unpublished manuscript is based on a speech he gave at my farewell symposium in Amsterdam University Medical Centre, held on 20th January 2020 in Amsterdam. The symposium was entitled “Responsive, Participatory Research: Past, Present and Future Perspectives.” This was the last time I met him in person, and I hope his legacy continues to inspire future generations and ongoing dialogues about the essence of what is and should be at the heart of evaluation. I would like to thank Thomas Schwandt for his presence and keynote lecture, for his wisdom, critical thinking, for being willing to deliberate and stay connected for a period of more than 30 years, for the mutual learning, and for helping me to build a body of work I believe in.