Prof Richard Tucker

Richard is currently co-leader of the research network HOME.

The HOME team offers a rare disciplinary combination in housing research in Australia – diverse expertise located at the nexus of theory and practice in health, built environment, social enquiry, economics and law. This allows for the integration of perspectives, frameworks, epistemologies, methods, and theories; enabling a holistic understanding of the housing crisis beyond the scope of any one discipline.

HOME members already have strong track record of collaborating together, working:

• towards improving existing developments and communities;
• with community organisations and local government to inform solutions to local issues; and
• to evaluate and promote models of best practice for dissemination beyond the local community.

HOME research aims prepare communities for societal change, offsetting predicted heightened housing stress, rapidly growing urban populations, shifting job markets due to global competition and technological change, new patterns of migrancy and inequality, and an ageing population.

Richard's approach towards higher education research has been guided by a firm belief in the efficacy of collaboration. There is a compelling need for the proposition of transdisciplinary outcomes using the interdisciplinary knowledge and methods of multidisciplinary research expertise. Thus, Richard has authored and formed research teams around assessment and teaching innovation with over 40 colleagues from seven academic institutions and a dozen industry partners. He has led numerous cross-faculty research projects on assessment practices with colleagues from the faculties of Health, Arts and Education, and Business and Law. A passion for collaboration has not just informed whom Richard has worked with, but also what the focus of this work has been. For instance, his teaching and research  coalesced in the leadership of a Category 1 funded multi-institutional project on teaching and assessing teamwork in the design disciplines. Effective assessment and learning in teamwork contexts has thus become the key aim of his teaching, informing a expertise increasingly relevant and valuable in a higher education environment where group learning is the almost ubiquitous result of ever growing cohorts.

He has been at the forefront of  research led innovation in his discipline for approaching 15 years. This work has spanned a number of roles in projects that have had institutional and national influence, including:

• development of an on-line self-and-peer-assessment tool that is used to evaluate individual contributions to teamwork (SAPCA);
• ALTC funded project Assessing Creativity: Strategies & Tools to support Teaching and Learning in Architecture & Design;
• OLT funded Innovation & Development project Enhancing and assessing group and team learning in architecture and related design contexts. This project made recommendations for sector-wide changes to the assessment of teamwork in design learning.

Richard has over 40 publications in the area of design pedagogy.

Academic Career Synopsis: Through sustained evidence-based innovation and research, Richard has become an internationally recognised specialist (with approaching 50 publications) in the pedagogy of architectural design and related contexts; an area of education previously largely neglected by researchers. His work has involved substantial competitive grant-funded projects (ten investigations, funded for over $1 million) including six as project leader) that have enhanced learning satisfaction and outcomes for his students. For five years he has been in Teaching & Learning and then Research leadership roles in the school, a period that has coincided with dramatic improvements in school-wide SET scores and research outputs. His acknowledged teaching excellence lies in the area of innovation through research in the areas of: teamwork, multidisciplinary collaboration, assessment, studio-based problem-based learning, flexible delivery, environmental and ‘sustainable’ design, Work Integrated Learning (WiL) and universal design. Richard’s research has led to improvements in teamwork learning across the University, improvements in this area in other higher education institutions, and has been recognised through a Carrick citation and the WJC Banks Award as the most outstanding teacher at Deakin University in 2007. Richard was responsible for implementing a new model of WiL in his school, and also designed Self-and-Peer-Assessment software that has been used across faculties and other institutions.

In 2011, Richard became only the second teacher in the discipline of Architecture to be awarded the prestigious Australian Learning and Teaching Council Award for Teaching Excellence.

Richard teaches design from 2nd year to 5th year, with a focus on sustainable design and the learning of teamwork skills.

He also teaching Building Environmental Studies, which focuses on passive solar design.

Richard supervises around 20 Masters-level student research theses per year.

Richard is currently co-leader of the research network HOME.

HOME connects experts from Architecture & Urban Planning, Humanities & Social Sciences, Health & Social Development, Geography, Anthropology, Economics, Social Policy and Law to enlighten the causes and health impacts of the housing crisis. HOME fills a significant research gap through focus on evitalising existing housing, creatively reusing other existing buildings, and better integrating new development.

HOME has a single core aim: A Home for all.

Our research focuses on four themes:

• Home for life: designed to be adaptable and universally accessible, meeting our various needs, enabling us to engage in personally meaningful activities, safe and securely ours, and so home for all stages of life;
• Home we can afford: designed to minimise energy use, constructed to minimise negative environmental and health impacts, matching our means, available to all, and so home that is sustainable collectively and individually;
• Home where we know our neighbours: designed for social connectivity, encompassing diversity, and so a home where we can strengthen relationships across difference;
• Home that is connected: linked to occupations, services, education, nature, transport, play, food, and to the wider community.

Richard led the Built Environment Education research group at Deakin between 2012 & 2016. This was one of the most successful areas for research within the school during that period, and included discipline-based investigation of learning and teaching in the built environment subject communities of Architecture, Construction Management, Landscape and Urban Planning. Researchers in the school have been leaders and investigators of Category 1 grant funded projects approaching a total value of nearly $1 million. Visit the Teaching Teamwork in Design website for more information.

2012 Smart Geelong Network Researcher of the Year (Disability category) for Design-4-Diversity team

2012 Smart Geelong Network Researcher of the Year (Highly Commended) for Design-4-Diversity team

2011 ALTC Teaching Excellence Award

2010 Deakin Commendation for Teaching Excellence
2010 F E Crowle Hansen and Yunken Australian Institute of Building Award for Excellence in Teaching – the top award for teachers in the Construction Management discipline.

2009 Deakin University Teaching Award

2007 Carrick Citation for Outstanding Contribution to Student Learning
2007 Deakin University Award for Teaching Excellence
2007 Vice-Chancellor’s Award for Distinguished Teaching
2007 WJC Banks Award for Distinguished Contributions To Teaching and Learning - the Banks Award is the Deakin University Teacher of the Year.