Michael A. Peters was educated at Johnsonville Primary School and Onslow College before attending Victoria University of Wellington on a government studentship to become a teacher, completing a Batchelor degree majoring in Geography and English and an Honour degree in Geography. He attended Christchurch Teachers’ College in 1972 graduating with a Teachers’ Diploma and Certificate with Distinction. He taught senior Geography and English for five years at Linwood High School before taking a position as head of Geography and Liberal Studies at Long Bay College. While at Linwood Michael completed a BSc in Philosophy of Science. In 1979 he enrolled at Auckland University in an MA in the Philosophy Department, gaining a First Class Honours degree and winning a PhD Scholarship. He completed my PhD in Philosophy of Education in 1984 focusing on the philosophy of Wittgenstein. In the seven years following Michael worked as a research consultant for a range of government departmentswhile also holding positions as a tutor at Auckland University and Auckland Polytechnic, and part-time lecturer at the Auckland College of Education. In 1990 He was appointed Lecturer in Education at the University of Canterbury, returning to Auckland University in 1992 as Senior Lecturer and soon after he was appointed as an Associated Professor. Michael was awarded a Personal Chair in 2000 and held this position concurrent with a position as Research Professor at the Faculty of Education in the University of Glasgow for five years. In 2005 he was appointed as an Excellence Hire Professor at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and made Emeritus Professor after leaving to take up a position of Professor in the Faculty of Education at the University of Waikato in 2011. Michael has been the executive editor of
Educational Philosophy and Theory, and founding editor of five international journals, including
The Video Journal of Education and Pedagogy (Springer), Open Review of Educational Research (T&F). His research and teaching interests are in the philosophy of education where he have developed the notion of philosophy-as-pedagogy and pedagogical philosophy, and the political economy of education. Michael has been a teacher for some fifty years and supervised and examined over 50 PhD students. He has written and edited some eighty books, including most recently:
Companion to Wittgenstein and Education: Pedagogical Investigations, (ed. 2017) with Jeff Stickney,
Companion to Research in Teacher Education (ed. 2017) with Bronwen Cowen and Ian Mentor,
Paulo Freire: The Global Legacy (ed. 2015) with Tina Besley. His books have been translated into ten languages. He has acted as an educational advisor to governments and UNESCO in the USA (NSF), Scotland, NZ, South Africa and the EU. He was made an Honorary Fellow of the Royal Society of NZ in 2010 and awarded honorary doctorates by State University of New York (SUNY) in 2012 and University of Aalborg in 2015.
