The award has been established to recognise and promote the value of an evidence-based approach to improving policy and practice in the vocational education sector and was presented to Professor Harris last night by the Chief Minister of the Northern Territory, Paul Henderson, at the Australian Training Awards ceremony in Darwin.
Professor Harris has been researching in the field for more than 20 years, initially focussing on competency-based training. His work in this specific area is regarded as seminal in the VET sector.
He was a recipient of one of the earliest VET research grants made under the Australian National Training Authority Research Advisory Committee scheme and since then he has continued to be successful in winning VET research grants from the program managed by National Centre for Vocational Education Research as well as a number of ARC- Linkage grants with colleagues in Australia and overseas.
Across his career, Prof Harris has lead successful teams who have completed more than a $1million of funded research projects since the mid 1980s, a significant set of grants for any professor in education in the country.
His research has been broad and significant in examining contemporary VET practice including apprenticeships, workplace learning, the integration of on and off-job learning and most recently the development of the VET workforce.
UniSA Pro Vice Chancellor for Education Arts and Social Sciences, Professor Pal Ahluwalia says the breadth of Prof Harris' research is impressive.
"His breadth and diversity of his work is testament to his skills as a researcher and his scholarly approach," Prof Ahluwalia said.
"His work and the work done under his leadership has been cited in Senate and House of Representative inquiries and submissions and has informed major policy both locally and internationally."
He has been responsible for the publication of over 160 scholarly publications during his career - approximately one quarter of which have appeared as refereed publications, while a large number of monographs are published in full on policy websites.
In 2004 he was Visiting Professor at the University of Constance, Germany where he lectured on VET in Australia as part of a course on international comparative studies in VET.
A promoter of cross sector research teams, Professor Harris has done much to develop the next generation of VET researchers through his work as a supervisor of higher degree students in the VET sector.
"Through his work, Prof Harris has brought credibility to VET research work and steadfastly promoted the value and importance of VET as a sector," Prof Ahluwalia said.
"We are delighted that he has received such resounding acknowledgement of his research career contribution and extremely proud of his achievements."
