Critical Friends

Read the article “Through the Lens of a Critical Friend” by Costa and Kallick.

Find your Critical Friend and discuss the following and document you insights on your personal blog:

What is your understanding of the role of a critical friend?

Someone who is willing to listen to your ideas and and provide you with another perspective in which to view them and give feedback to improve your work.

What value could you gain from a critical friend?

Critical friends can help to you to see any potential pitfalls that may arise as you work through a particular idea.  A different perspective is also allows you to see get some clarity on aspects that you maybe didn't think about.

Share your reaction and questions pertaining to the six-step process for critical friends.

In step three the learner sets the outcomes for the conference and is in control of the feedback, but I think that there should be an opportunity for the Critical Friend to also bring up other ideas that he or she noticed without fear of venturing outside of the bounds of the conversation.

What key character traits would an individual need to possess to be an effective and desirable critical friend?

A critical friend would need to have good listening skills and the ability to be objective.  They would also need to be able to be good an rephrasing and summarizing ideas to make sure that they are properly understanding the learners objective.

Which traits do you feel will be the most challenging for you personally?

The process seems potentially time consuming, even though the author says it can take 20 minutes or less to complete.  I don't know if that time commitment is realistic and it seems so difficult to find time to do much of anything without adding another time commitment into the mix.  

Next,  generate questions based on the scenarios below.  Be sure to record your questions on your personal blog.

Your critical friend has just shared that he/she did not go into the depth you would have expected on a critical reflective practices piece assigned the previous month.  What kind of questions could you pose that would help push him/her to the next level?

I could continue to ask questions about what they think the consequences of certain actions might be.  That might cause the learner to look deeper.  "Is there another way to look at this?"  "Am I missing anything?"  What would be the consequences of this?"

You’ve asked your students to pair up and critique each other’s writing/assignment.  What kind of questions do you hope they would ask each other?

• Why did you decide to answer in this way?
• What influenced you to write this essay?
• What were you thinking about when you wrote this work?