Self-Study, Critical Friendship, and the Complexities of Teacher Education

When the right hand washes the left, the right hand comes clean too. (Nigerian [Igbo] proverb) The notion of critical friendship is central to self-study. A critical friend acts as a sounding board, asks challenging questions, supports reframing of events, and joins in the professional learning experience. In this paper, we share our experiences of acting as critical friends for each other in two separate self-studies of practice. We discuss what we learnt about our practice from having and being a critical friend, as well as what we learnt about the role of the critical friend.