Developing and Maintaining a Critical Friendship in Academia

This paper investigates the development of a critical friendship between two individuals pursuing careers in academia in Ontario, Canada. Over a threeyear period, the relationship continued to evolve and change. Utilizing a narrative inquiry, this paper explores the professional and personal experiences contributing to the development and maintenance of this critical friendship in various aspects of early-career academia. Findings from this study are consistent with components of Baskerville and Goldblatt’s (2009) developmental phases of a critical friendship. A reconfiguration of their existing conceptual framework, however, revealed that, for us, creating and developing a critical friendship is a cyclical and interconnected process. Complete Text We (Courtney and Taunya) share our story of three years of lived experience as aspiring academics. We have decided to focus on the support and knowledge we have gained together that has ultimately contributed to the development of our critical friendship. For the purposes of this paper, we define the term critical friend based on Baskerville and Goldblatt’s (2009) interpretation; a critical friend is a practitioner who is reflective with a deep passion for knowledge and learning, who continues to establish safe and effective ways of working with a colleague to develop shared understandings that support, challenge, and further develop practice. Critical friendship is the foundation we utilized as the impetus for our study. We used this lens to analyze data and to develop further understandings of our specific critical friendship. To begin, it is important to consider our professional backgrounds and how we came to work together. Both of us prepared as teachers in a concurrent education program (BA and BEd degrees pursued simultaneously). Courtney graduated in 2010 and Taunya in 2009. We both continued at the same university and completed our Master of Education degrees. Courtney completed her thesis in 2012 and Taunya in 2010. Our professional education was greatly influenced by the importance of reflective practice and we were exposed to many educational philosophies and methods. Within this extensive knowledge base, we had the freedom to be active in our education and to adopt influential teaching/learning philosophies into our own thinking and practice. At the time we met, Courtney was in the second term of her Master of Education program and Taunya was in her first year teaching as a part-time university instructor. We became research assistants for the same two professors and it was soon suggested that we work together on research projects as project demands increased. NIPISSING UNIVERSITY CENTRE FOR THE STUDY OF LEADERSHIP & ETHICS ◆ ISSN 1925-282X (Online) JOURNAL OF AUTHENTIC DUCATION LEADERSHIP IN E January 2014 Published online at csle.nipissingu. ca VOLUME 3, NUMBER 2 JOURNAL OF AUTHENTIC LEADERSHIP IN EDUCATION Co-editors: Ronald Wideman and Heather Rintoul Nipissing University, Canada Editorial Board: Carly Ackley Johns Hopkins University, USA Helene Arlestig Umea University, Sweden Charles Burford Australian Catholic University, Australia Carolyn Crippen University of Victoria, Canada Catherine Hands Toronto, Canada Edward Hickcox Victoria, Canada Olof Johansson Umea University, Sweden Pauline Leonard Louisiana Tech University, USA Anthony Normore California State University, USA Joseph Polizzi Marywood University, USA Sharon Rich Nipissing University, Canada Robert J. Starratt Boston College, USA Nancy Tuana Penn State University, USA Allan Walker Hong Kong Institute of Education, SAR, China Lindy Zaretsky Geneva Centre for Autism, Canada