Friends or critical friends

Abstract

The following study investigates the components of critical friendship in the hope of establishing a measure that can be used to assess one's ability to serve as a critical friend. Critical friendship is an underserved component of feedback giving and receiving that fits within the collaborative learning framework. A critical friend is defined as "a trusted person who asks provocative questions, provides data to be examined through another lens, and offers critique of a person's work as a friend" (Costa & Kallick, 1993, p. 50). A measure of critical friendship was developed here, The Critical Friendship Scale (CFS), to determine one's level of critical friendship. A principal component analysis revealed the following components of the Critical Friendship Scale: giving feedback, interpersonal trust, receiving feedback, intellectual desire, intrapersonal trust, carefulness, and caring. This scale provides a basis for which to further improve and develop a valid and reliable measure for assessing one's level of critical friendship. As such, future research should look to improve the CFS and then use it in training individuals in critical friendship. The CFS also has the opportunity for broader use within the feedback domain as scholars search for ways to give effective feedback to diverse audiences.