Critical+friend's+page

I’d like to a critical friend in the sense that I’d like to help Daniela with taking the right actions and decisions in her action-research project. My task is therefore to help Daniela to articulate and make explicit the rationale behind those actions and decisions and to present her with information from a different point of view. I think it will be important for me to understand the full picture of the class where Daniela works and I plan a school visit and one or two classroom observation sessions. Therefore I will provide my feedback only after careful thinking and after having considered the whole context. If action research is conducted in isolation there is the risk of loosing sight of the main purpose of cooperative classroom investigation, that is sharing common problems and working cooperatively as a research community. The opportunity to refer to a group of teacher colleagues and to a researcher in the role of critical friend through the pages of this wiki, can help Daniela to sort out her thinking and make sensible decisions. At the same time, the teachers and me, as critical friends, can improve our listening skills, learn how to ask stimulating questions that help Daniela delineate expectations and intentions, help her realize when her expectations for herself and her pupils are too low or too high, and tell us when she realizes that her actions haven’t matched her intentions. Hopefully such multi-logue can help others grow professionally in ways that conferences, readings or teacher training classes cannot. Critical friends must exert certain fundamental virtues: In addition, they: Critical friends avoid:
 * What ‘critical friend’ I’d like to be?**
 * Action-research and professional development**
 * The ‘golden rules’ of a critical friend**
 * Respect
 * Trust
 * Understanding
 * Listen well;
 * Clarify ideas;
 * Encourage analysis;
 * Understand the context of the work;
 * Fully understand the desired outcomes of the work;
 * Offer value judgments only when asked;
 * Respond with honesty and professional integrità;
 * Act as an advocate for the success of the work.
 * Being negative - they are an advocate, not a critic.
 * Any conflict of interest or values, and they avoid hiding any personal agenda (they may have an agenda, but it must be shared at the time of the first interaction).
 * Dishonesty and vagueness in their responses.
 * Being arbitrarily judgmental.
 * Directing- they are there to provide support.
 * How does the critical friends process work?**

A typical process might include the following steps (CF --> Critical Friend, T --> Teacher):
 * 1) Mutual acknowledgement of the critical friends process;
 * 2) CF asks to observe a lesson or unit, after being informed about the objectives of the lesson and its constraints;
 * 3) Once observed, CF and T schedule a conference (or an on-line web chat) and jointly set desired outcomes for the conference.
 * 4) CF asks questions in order to understand what was observed and clarify the context in which the lesson or unit took place.
 * 5) CF provides feedback about what seems significant about the lesson or unit.
 * 6) CF raises questions nudging the teacher to see the lesson or unit from different perspectives.
 * 7) During the conference both participants reflect on the points and suggestions raised or suggested, or on advice that seems appropriate to the desired outcome.

Adapted from NCRTEC http://www.ncrtec.org/pd/llwt/coach/tips.htm, 2005