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Critical Friends

Day, C. (1999). 'Self-renewal: Appraisal, change and personal development planning.' In Developing teachers: The challenges of lifelong learning. Educational Change and Development Series. Bristol: Falmer Press. ED 434 878.

Day writes that establishing links with colleagues through critical friendships can decrease isolation and provide a way of achieving learning and change. Mutual disclosure of thoughts, practices, feelings, hopes and fears may lead to deeper levels of self-reflection and experimentation and higher teaching standards. Day (1999, p. 101) provides a comparison between the advantages and disadvantages of critical friendships in the process of self-evaluation and self-renewal.

Advantages of critical friends (from inside or outside the school)
Provided they are skilled and trusted, they can:

  • lighten the energy and time loads for observation (enable the teacher to carry on with teaching, maintain his or her duties), often relieving the teacher of the burden of collecting and analysing his or her own data
  • be used to check against bias in self-reporting
  • offer comparisons with classroom practice elsewhere (where appropriate)
  • provide post-lesson critical dialogues
  • act as an informal resource which teachers may use according to their perceived needs
  • stimulate reflection about teaching and learning contexts, conditions and purposes.

Disadvantages of critical friends (from inside or outside the school)
If they are unskilled and not trusted, you may encounter the following problems.

  • Unless they become a regular part of the classroom over time, children and teachers may react in non-typical ways.
  • The exercise might be time-consuming and counter productive.
  • Critical friends must spend time together before and after the work is observed.

Critical friendships require:

  • a willingness to share
  • a recognition that sharing involves disclosure and feedback
  • a recognition that disclosure and feedback imply being prepared to consider changing
  • a recognition that change may be threatening (to self-esteem and current practice), difficult (it requires time, energy and new skills) and emotionally demanding
  • A recognition that the degree to which people are willing to share may, therefore, be restricted.

(Day, 1999, p. 102)

Day argues that collegial cultures and critical friendships are central to the successful promotion of continuing professional development.