Learning to be a critical friend: from professional indifference through challenge to unguarded conversations

Paying the piper: the costs and consequences of academic advancement

“…Tim's role in this study was that of critical friend to Ashley; someone who could ask provocative questions, contribute and examine data from another lens and offer a critique of a colleague's work (Costa & Kallick, 1993). Critical friendship enables the challenging of assumptions, confrontation of realities and identification of new ways of thinking about practice in its various forms (Baskerville & Goldblatt, 2009). Tim's role as critical friend was important given our perceived challenges of articulating our struggles as academic workers honestly to a third party, particularly when that third party may be one of the departmental or disciplinary gatekeepers discussed earlier.…”

An action research approach for embedding education for sustainability in a university undergraduate curriculum

“…Critical friends have been widely used in the school context to promote individual and professional learning and reflection in practice (Bambino, 2002;Baskerville & Goldblatt, 2009;Butler et al, 2011). Critical friends can be outsiders to the organisation such as HE academics or external advisers acting as educational experts (Nind, 2003), or it can be a critical friend group with peers from the same organisation or peers from other schools (Bambino, 2002).…”

“…Furthermore, critical friends face a number of challenges, such as effective communication, ownership of the project, power relations and time constraints (Baskerville & Goldblatt, 2009;Kember et al, 1997;Pettigrew, 2003). In this sense, the challenges as facilitators of an interdisciplinary working group using action research, according to , include: the type of support required by lecturers; the complex interactions between people from different disciplinary backgrounds; the lack of lecturers' time available; and the maintenance of motivation within the participants for the duration of the study.…”

“…ownership of the project, organisational politics, power relations, and time constraints (Baskerville & Goldblatt, 2009;Kember et al, 1997;Pettigrew, 2003). I ensured that the participants that were not able to attend the group session could have all the information on the main discussion points and outcomes of the sessions through sharing summary documents (see sections 7.7.2 and 7.7.3).…”

“…Power can create productive, relational and participatory decision-making processes (Foucault, 2000). Power tensions exist when facilitating any research; researchers (including action researchers) can be outsiders and can find themselves in a powerful relation with participants, due to knowledge and position (Bambino, 2002;Baskerville & Goldblatt, 2009). The help and position of my supervisors enabled the undertaking of an action research project at the University, which aimed to create democratic participation and the empowerment of participants (Gaventa & Cornwall, 2008).…”