Rules

• Only papers in peer-reviewed journals that have a publication date of the previous calendar year are eligible.  Publication is taken to mean publication in either online or print format. The article has to be published in either format in the previous calendar year. So a paper published in online format in 2018 and print format in 2019 or vice versa would be eligible for the 2020 award.
• Only papers on the ERA list as current at the time of the call for entries are eligible for entry.
• Entries that meet the criteria are welcome from both authors and third party nominators.
• Entries can be made can be made by authors on topics that make outstanding contributions to our knowledge of VET in Australia and beyond.
• VET is broadly interpreted. The range of subject areas is not limited to teaching and learning or the management of VET and VET systems but also workforce development and issues within skills and vocational knowledge development more generally.

PROCESS

Submissions of no more than one of an author’s journal articles to the AVETRA Secretariat by Friday 11 March 2022 for judging to take place during March. The Award will be presented at the 2022 AVETRA Annual Conference to be held on 28/29 April. The entry is to be accompanied by a cover sheet and the cover sheet will be dated by the secretariat on receipt, as well as current CVs of the author/s.

Entrants must provide an e-copy of the paper as approved for publication (eg from the journal web site, or scanned copy of hard copy, or failing that from a university’s institutional repository). This is the responsibility of the author.

For joint-authored papers, only the first author may submit the paper and must get signatures or emails from other authors to agree to submission. These permissions must be submitted with the paper.

No two authors can submit separate papers from the same research project.

For nominations made by the third parties, the nominator must get signatures or emails from the authors to agree to submission. These permissions must be submitted with the paper.

A chair of the process (who will be an AVETRA Executive member) and a panel of Executive members will be nominated by AVETRA Executive. Extra members may be co-opted if necessary.

Judges may not enter papers in the competition and may not work in the same institution as any of the candidates, may not be involved in the relevant research project or in other current research collaborations, or have other conflicts of interest (eg relative or PhD supervisor).

The chair establishes prima facie eligibility of papers.

Judges complete an evaluation form for each paper and the Chair collates the results and forwards a recommendation to the AVETRA Officers for approval.

The decision of the panel is final and no correspondence will be entered into. Feedback is not given to authors. 

AVETRA reserves the right not to make an award if none of the applications received meets the criteria for award. 

Previous Awardees

2017 Claire Rasmussen, Federation University

2015 Sarojni Choy, Griffith University

2013 Hugh Guthrie

2012 Erica Smith

2010 Kevin Heys (TAFE NSW)

2008 Peter Kell (University of Wollongong)

2006 Karen Whittingham (TAFE NSW)