I started teaching history in secondary schools in 1989, having completed my PGCE at Reading University. In total I spent 15 years in schools teaching. Much of that time was spent as Head of Department and Head of Humanities. In addition, whilst working in the unitary authority of West Berkshire, I was employed as teacher consultant for history, giving me responsibility for providing in-service training in history. I still continue to be involved in the delivery of in-service training. The last three years of my career in school was divided between teaching part time and setting up and running the history PGCE course at the University of Southampton. I finally was offered a full time post at Southampton in 2004. My interest in helping others become history teachers grew partly out of my time as a mentor in the Gloucestershire ITT scheme, but also the feeling that I had something worthwhile to share with others following my Masters degree.

Studying at Westminster College, Oxford, I undertook an action research project to improve the quality of essay writing with my A level students. Not only did this help in improving the examination grades of my students, it transformed my understanding of history teaching and gave me new insights into teaching. Since then I have become more closely involved in the history education community primarily through the Historical Association where I currently sit on the secondary executive committee. This has led to involvement in organising events such as the Past Forward conference of 2002, and more recently overseeing the History Initial Teacher Training project, funded by the Teacher Training Agency and in conjunction with other universities. Out of this project has grown a website that provides training materials for people new to teacher training. Recently I have been involved in the QCA review of the KS3 history curriculum and I have also been asked to Chair the Historical Association's Secondary Committee from 2008.

My research interests have covered 6th form history, particularly improving essay writing, the place of empathy in history, various aspects of history initial teacher training, pupil perceptions of KS3 history, the current status of history in the curriculum (my PhD work is focusing on teaching diversity through history) and the promotion of socio-scientific issues through combined science and humanities work.

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• Significant Publications
• Harris, Richard and Haydn, Terry (2006) "Pupils' enjoyment of history: what lessons can teachers learn from their pupils?" Curriculum Journal, 17, (4),315-333. (doi:10.1080/09585170601072544)
• Harris, Richard and Ratcliffe, Mary (2005) Socio-scientific issues and the quality of exploratory talk - what can be learned from schools involved in a 'collapsed day' project? The Curriculum Journal , 16 (4) , 439-453.
• Harris, R and Foreman-Peck, L (2004) ‘Stepping into Other People’s Shoes’: Teaching and Assessing Empathy in the Secondary History Curriculum International Journal of Historical Learning, Teaching and Research Vol. 4, No. 2
• Harris, R. & Foreman-Peck, L. (2001) ‘Learning to Teach History Writing: discovering what works’ Educational Action Research Journal Vol. 9, No. 1, 97-109.
• Books
• Harris, Richard J. and Luff, Ian (2005) Meeting SEN in the Curriculum: History , London, David Fulton Publishers, 160pp. (Meeting SEN in the Curriculum)
• Book Chapters
• Ratcliffe, Mary, Harris, Richard and McWhirter, Jenny (2005) Cross-curricular collaboration in teaching social aspects of genetics. In, Boersma, K., Goedhart, M., de Jong, O. and Eijkelhof, H. (eds.) Research

• Journal Articles
• Harris, Richard and Haydn, Terry (2009) '30% is not bad considering ...' Factors influencing pupil take-up of history post Key Stage 3: an exploratory enquiry. Teaching History, 134, 27-35.
• Harris, Richard and Haydn, Terry (2008) Children's ideas about school history and why they matter. Teaching History, 132, 40-49.
• Glynne-Jones, Peter, Hill, Martyn, Harris, Nicholas R., Townsend, Rosemary J. and Ravula, Surendra K. (2008) The design and modeling of a lateral acoustic particle manipulator exhibiting quarter-wave operation. Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, 123, (5), p.3841. (doi:10.1121/1.2935644)
• Harris, Richard (ed.) (2006) "Editorial. Citizenship education". Prospero,12, (3), 3-5.
• Harris, Richard J. (2005) Does differentiation have to mean different? Teaching History, 118, 5-12. http://eprints.soton.ac.uk/15590/
• Ratcliffe, Mary and Harris. Richard and McWhirter, Jenny (2004) Teaching ethical aspects of science - is cross-curricular collaboration the answer? School Science Review, 86 (315), pp.39-44.
• Riley, M. & Harris, R. (eds) (2003) ‘Past Forward: a vision for school history 2002-2012' (conference papers)
• Harris, R. (2003) Empathy and History Teaching - an unresolved dilemma? in Prospero Vol. 9, No. 1
• Harris, R. and Kitson, A(2002) Basket weaving in Advanced level history…how to plan and teach the 100 year study, Teaching History109, 27-35
• Harris, R. (2001) ‘Why essay writing remains central to learning history at AS level’. Teaching History, 103, 13-16.
• Harris, R. (2000) ‘An action research project to improve the quality of A Level History writing’ Prospero Vol. 6, Nos. 3 & 4.
• Selection of International Conference Papers
• Haydn, Terry and Harris, Richard John (2009) What factors influence pupils' commitment to history as a school subject? A view from the United Kingdom. In, American Educational Research Association Annual Meeting (AERA 2009), San Diego, USA, 13-18 Apr 2009. .
• Harris, Richard and Haydn, Terry (2008) Pupil and teacher perspectives on motivation and engagement in high school history: a U.K. view. In, American Educational Research Association (AERA 2008), New York, USA, 24-28 Mar 2008. , 21pp.
• Haydn, Terry and Harris, Richard (2008) Children’s ideas about what it means ‘to get better’ at history: a view from the UK. In, Empirical Research on HIstory Learning - International Society for History Didactics, Tutzing, Germany, 08-10 Sep 2008.
• Harris, Richard and Haydn, Terry (2007) Getting pupils to ‘see the point’ of school subjects: history, a case study. In, BERA Annual Conference 2007, London, UK, 5-8 Sep 2007.
• Harris, Richard and Haydn, Terry (2007) Getting pupils to ‘see the point’ of school subjects: history, a case study. In, ECER 2007, Ghent, Belgium, 18-22 Sep 2007.
• Harris, Richard J and Haydn, Terry (2006) "Pupil perceptions of history as a school subject". In, ECER 2006 Geneva. European Conference on Educational Research Geneva 2006, Geneva, Switzerland, 13-16 Sep 2006. Glasgow, Scotland, European Educational Research Association, 19pp.
• Harris, Richard (2005) Evaluations- what lessons can we learn from these? In, British Educational Research Association, University of Glamorgan, UK, 14-17 Sep 2005. , 12pp.
• Monographs
• Bhopal, K., Harris, R., and Rhamie, J. (2009) The teaching of 'race', diversity and inclusion on PGCE courses: a case study analysis of University of Southampton, Multiverse, TDA
• Other
• Harris, Richard J. and Luff, Ian (2004) Meeting Special Needs in History, London, David Fulton Publishers, 160pp