Critical friendship in international education reform: a journey to educational cultural convergence

The goal of the study is to share the development and maintenance of a Critical Friendship.Critical Friendship is a model of educator-educator relationship that offers an informal forum for low-risk, open-ended, and non-analytic collegiate interactions in professional-personal development. In this self-study, using exploratory research methods, the authors investigate a CF action process in a higher education teacher context based on anecdotal evidence, reflection on practice, peer observation and action research. Following on the work of Towndrow, and Curry, the authors develop a pathway to CF and compare this small-scale study to similar results achieved in a broad-based CF program initiated in Latvia. This CF developed at a teacher education college in the change-rich GCC (Gulf Cooperation Council) education reform, 2009-2011. This study demonstrates that CF establishes shared practice into a cohesive learning focus for productive action, and leads to a renewed pro-personal teacher identity. Results indicate that CF processes stimulate approaches to learning, and lead tutors to different ways of framing situations. The authors demonstrate the importance of CF in the development of new concepts, such as “educational cultural convergence”. This participatory, mutuallyinforming, CF is scaffolded by processes: peer observation, conduct, action research, and reflection. The authors conclude by outlining the benefits and potentiality of CF.