Chris Peers

Monash University

Chris Peers is Senior Lecturer in education at Monash University in Melbourne, Australia.
His work is in the field of educational philosophy, with an interest in the intersection of moral and aesthetic ideas; Chris' research views economic concepts as expressions of a moral philosophy borrowed from the enlightenment, better known as neoliberalism. He is focused on interrogating the way in which these ideas emerge in educational policy and practice.

Chris is currently studying for his second doctorate in the field of philosophy, with a dissertation on the history of concepts of the family in Western thought. His thesis focuses specifically on the way in which Plato and Hegel conceptualised the family. Chris is studying these philosophies using a framework borrowed from the French deconstructionist, Jacques Derrida.

In his new book for IAP, Chris argues that prevalent educational concepts, such as "class size", express neoliberal ideas about the way in which freedom can be purchased in contemporary Western society. He takes up the idea of "freedom" in terms of a binary opposition between the individual and population studies that adopt statistical methods to reduce individuals to units of population.

BOOKS:

Class Size and Pupil‐Teacher Ratios

Where Education and Economics Collide

2016

Chris Peers, Monash University