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Through the Lens of a Critical Friend
Abstract
Every student and educator needs a trusted person to ask provocative questions and offer helpful critiques. A critical friend understands the context of the work presented and the person or group's desired outcomes. Critical friendships begin through building trust; critical friends must listen well, offer value judgments on the learner's request, respond honestly, and promote the work's success. (MLH)
... Defined as trusted individuals selected for their knowledge, experience, and skills, critical friends serve as advocates for the initiative's success (Campbell et al. 2004). They ask provocative questions, provide alternative perspectives on data, and offer constructive critiques of the work (Mat Noor and Shafee 2020; Costa and Kallick 1993). It is crucial to understand that critique from a critical friend is not intended to be negative but rather generative, aimed at facilitating more profound understanding and exploration (Coghlan and Brydon-Miller 2014). ...
... It is crucial to understand that critique from a critical friend is not intended to be negative but rather generative, aimed at facilitating more profound understanding and exploration (Coghlan and Brydon-Miller 2014). By assuming roles such as participant observers, peer reviewers, and facilitators, critical friends contribute to the initiative's richness and depth (Costa and Kallick 1993). They seek to uncover deeper meanings, explore alternative explanations, and encourage the use of iterative protocols or processes. ...
This paper explores the complexities of involving partner organisations in co-generative learning processes within Action Research (AR) initiatives. Despite formal agreements, action researchers often face challenges in collaboratively addressing specific organisational issues through AR cycles. When action researchers adopt the “friendly outsider’ role, their initial task is to secure commitment to an AR initiative from senior leaders as sponsors. However, the existing literature lacks comprehensive guidance on facilitating this commitment. Therefore, drawing from both literature and empirical cases, this paper examines the pivotal role of the AR sponsor in securing funding and political backing, offering constructive critique, and facilitating learning. It provides insights into how action researchers can facilitate sponsors to enact these roles effectively so as to ensure the success and sustainability of organisational changes resulting from AR initiatives.
... Practising an ethic of care in institutional research involves taking the time to understand the context and observe how gendered dynamics operate and interrelate with other institutional norms (Costa and Kallick, 1993). Moreover, feminist critical friends acknowledge that trust between researcher and researched should never be taken for granted but instead consistently nurtured (Holvikivi, 2019). ...
This article explores the application of feminist critical friendship (FCF) as a research approach to study institutional change in academic settings, contributing to feminist institutionalism-informed research with ethical and methodological reflections. Discussing the theoretical underpinnings of FCF, its practical application in academia and the ethical considerations of conducting research as an insider, the study underscores the importance of adopting a feminist ethic of care, acknowledging the complex reality of gender reform and the role of change agents in navigating and implementing change. It highlights the potential of FCF to foster collaborative and horizontal relationships between researchers and participants, aiming for knowledge production that reflects the nuanced reality of institutional change.
... Scholars have advocated for using critical friends as part of research triangulation to validate their research data (Coghlan & Brydon-Miller, 2014). As a critical friend in this study, the second author played an active and reciprocal role by asking critical questions, examining data, providing advice, and critiquing the research (Costa and Kallick, 1993). Additionally, his positionality as a former special education teacher and district inclusion specialist, as well as currently serving as university faculty member with a research agenda centered on understanding, developing, and studying the outcomes of high quality, clinically rich, and collaborative teacher education models informed the research process. ...
Blended and other collaborative models of early childhood personnel preparation center on the belief that they can improve the quality and availability of inclusive services for children with diverse abilities and their families. Little is known, however, as to their relative efficacy to impact the inclusive practice of graduates. Further, current understanding of this approach is complicated by a lack of common terminology, conceptions, and a dated, primarily descriptive literature base. To provide a contemporary empirical contribution, we applied a conceptual framework derived from activity systems theory coupled with a research framework for collaborative models to examine one preparation program as a system through qualitative case study. Findings outline parameters of practice specific to collaborative program dimensions, elements of harmony and tension within the system, and cultural tools specific to the program’s attempts to meet its desired outcome. Implications for current and future collaborative early childhood personnel preparation are discussed.
... A critical friend (Costa & Kallick, 1993) who understood existing coach education and coach learning literature was utilised to challenging trustworthiness and transparency. This process attempted to mitigate the researcher's own subjectivities from displacing the reflections of the participants. ...
... A critical friend takes the time to understand fully the context of the work presented and the outcomes toward which the person or group is working. The friend is an advocate for the success of that work (Costa & Kallick, 1993). Depending on the context, students in our programs are either assigned or self-select a critical friend in a course or field experience. ...
ePortfolios are increasingly being used for teaching, assessing, and supporting students’ learning in higher education. With COVID-19 having forced many higher education institutions to move their education services and teaching to online spaces, ePortfolios have become more relevant in the assessment process as they are web-based. This self-study examines how ePortfolios are being used to support assessment practices in a South African and a Canadian teacher education program. Data comprised critical dialogue, notes, reflections, and conversations with students enrolled in both teacher education programs. Findings suggest that students use ePortfolios to integrate self, peer, and teacher/ expert feedback, which results in a 360-degree approach to assessment.
BRIEF ABSTRACT This paper reports on a participatory project that brought together five engineering educators for collaborative, agile professional development and research. Informed by Brookfield's (2017) approach to "critical conversation groups", five staff with a shared interest in humanitarian engineering came together with an academic developer to engage in facilitated, critically reflective conversations. The project explores an organic group-directed reflective process for academics' professional development, and asks: How would the reflective process evolve, what directions might we take, and what would be our lived experience as co-researcher/ participants on this shared conversational journey? The meta-reflection, reported here, reveals three emergent themes: facilitative teaching and embracing our humanness; from immersive learning to transactional teaching; and empathy in human-centred engineering. Consistent with a methodology that values co-researcher/participants' voices, the paper is presented in script format, which includes individual CRPs' names.
This paper illustrates the importance of critical reflexivity in guiding socially and ethically responsible participatory research through an analysis of reflexive notes pertaining to the process of a participatory filmmaking research project with children with disabilities. Within this process, numerous ethical tensions emerged in the field regarding the participation of children with disabilities, authenticity of stories shared, navigating facilitator’s voice, issues of representation of child co-researchers, safety and risks associated with sharing everyday realities within the film, and limits to immediate action. The practice of individual and shared critical reflexivity among researchers, and inclusivity of child co-researchers, was central in navigating ethical tensions. This paper makes transparent the process of critical reflexivity within a participatory action research project by highlighting the ethical tensions faced, contextualizing them within cultural practices and power relations, and sharing strategies used to address ‘ethics in practice.’ We end by proposing practical strategies to enhance reflexive research practices in participatory work.
This paper describes how we developed and applied an exploratory critical friends orientation to a critical literature review that explores how feminist theories and approaches have been used in archival studies literature and reports on insights generated by this method. A critical friend is a trusted ally and critic who both values our ideas and can push them forward. Our “critical friends” critical literature review includes two parts; using traditional critical review methods we identify and synthesize how critical feminist approaches have been employed in archival studies literature. Atypically, and in part two, we also pay attention to those scholarly articles that discussed relevant or related concepts but were ultimately excluded from our final literature review corpus during the appraisal process. These peripheral articles act as critical friends to the research area under review. We describe how this approach identifies disciplinary boundaries and traditions and explores areas of overlap across intersecting and adjacent fields. A critical friends approach allows us to generously interpret and analyze the complex concepts of “feminisms” and “archives” across disciplinary fields in order to identify, learn from, and engage across fields that have much in common as well as fundamental differences.
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