Chris Peers

My career in the visual arts began as an artist studying at what is now the UNSW Faculty of Art Design and Architecture between 1982 and 1984, where I gained a BA in Visual Arts. I returned to university in 1995 completing a B Art Education with Honours in 1998. I then undertook a PhD on the history of art teacher education in Australia, graduating in 2003. I began teaching in primary and secondary schools in NSW between 2001 and 2006. Since 2007 I have worked at Monash in the Faculty of Education across the early childhood, primary and secondary programs, with special responsibility for the method Visual Arts for secondary teachers.

I have two doctorates, the first in education and the second in gender studies and queer theory. In my first doctorate I studied the relationship between the idealized gender of the art teacher and that of the artists authorized to train people to be art teachers. However, since operating as a teacher educator at Monash, beginning in 2007, I have observed that the way that the education sector approaches gender is only through a mainstream, empirical concept, that permits only the narrowest scope of inquiry. My second doctorate tried to tackle the intersection between natural and cultural conceptions of gender, through a history of philosophical concepts of the family. This also enabled me to develop greater theoretical skills that I could use to reflect on the way in which education has traditionally understood itself.  Needless to say, education reflects very poorly, with only the most myopic perspective, on its own social and political purpose. My research is an attempt to provide a mirror for education to see those blind spots that it conceals from itself.

Chris has supervised students in research about the arts in education; early childhood policy; history and philosophy of education.