The document in the folder is called Critical Friend Literature. It begins with a modest sentence: “These notes identify some of the contributions to the discussion of critical friendship in the literature.”
What follows is uneven in a useful way. Some entries are little more than a reference. Others hold a paragraph, several passages, a question. There are page numbers and links back to the sources. The document preserves places to look. It does not tell us which works Keith read in full, in what order, or what he made of them.
One of those places is an eye examination.
In Through the Lens of a Critical Friend, Costa and Kallick (1993), the authors begin with someone looking through a succession of lenses. Another person changes the focus; the person in the chair must say whether the view is clearer. Their analogy makes a familiar difficulty visible: we may need help to see our own work, but the helper cannot see on our behalf.
Their critical friend asks questions, brings evidence into view and offers another perspective. Understanding the work and its context comes before offering a judgement. There is a purpose to the relationship beyond finding fault: helping the work succeed.
The learner sets the desired outcomes of the conversation. Value judgements are offered when requested. Afterwards, there is room to reflect without defending the work or immediately deciding what to change. Ownership includes helping determine what the exchange is for.
A short passage in the folder takes that responsibility further. Kember and colleagues (1997), writing about support for educational action research in Hong Kong, connect the progress of a project with the developing capacity of the teacher carrying it out. The critical friend supports the research by helping the teacher become more able to reflect and learn (p. 464).
Their account concerns academics investigating their own teaching. This is how they describe the role; it does not establish that every project achieved it. But it gives support a demanding purpose: the inquiry should move forward in a way that also develops the person conducting it.
That gives us something else to look for. A conversation might resolve the difficulty that brought two people together. What would it leave the learner able to notice or examine when another difficulty appeared?
Under John MacBeath’s name, the folder retains a question about independence, attributed to his 1998 chapter:
“Will this help to develop independence, the capacity to learn and to apply learning more effectively over time?”
The question shifts attention beyond the immediate exchange. It asks us to consider what repeated help might make possible over time. Someone may return to a trusted person often while becoming more capable of examining their own work. Independence need not mean having nobody to turn to.
Nor does putting the question on the page demonstrate that this development has happened. It gives the relationship something to answer for.
The folder has begun to offer more than a list of people writing about feedback. These passages ask how another person might help us see, how we retain responsibility for what we see, and whether that help develops our capacity to learn.
But there is an assumption holding this account together: that the help is directed towards the learner’s purposes. Once ownership matters, that assumption needs examining too.
If the learner is supposed to retain ownership, whose purposes is the critical friend actually serving?
References
Costa, A.L. and Kallick, B. (1993) ‘Through the lens of a critical friend’, Educational Leadership, 51(2), pp. 49–51. Original article.
Kember, D., Ha, T.-S., Lam, B.-H., Lee, A., Ng, S., Yan, L. and Yum, J.C.K. (1997) ‘The diverse role of the critical friend in supporting educational action research projects’, Educational Action Research, 5(3), pp. 463–481. doi:10.1080/09650799700200036.
MacBeath, J. (1998) ‘“I didn’t know he was ill”: The role and value of the critical friend’, in Stoll, L. and Myers, K. (eds.) No Quick Fixes: Perspectives on Schools in Difficulty. London: Falmer Press. Passage retained in Critical Friend Literature, attributed there to p. 131; wording also reproduced by Louise Stoll.