A critical friend is a supportive person who can ask difficult questions using

critical thinking Critical thinking is the analysis of available facts, evidence, observations, and arguments to form a judgement. The subject is complex; several different definitions exist, which generally include the rational, skeptical, and unbiased an ...

to judge a situation. The term has its origins in

critical pedagogy Critical pedagogy is a philosophy of education and social movement that developed and applied concepts from critical theory and related traditions to the field of education and the study of culture. It insists that issues of social justice and d ...

education reforms in the 1970s and arose out of the self-appraisal activity which is attributed to Desmond Nuttall. One of the most widely used definitions is from 1993, Andrew Hutchinson, a public sector consultant, introduced the term to the Local Government Consortium at the

University of Warwick , mottoeng = Mind moves matter , established = , type = Public research university , endowment = £7.0 million (2021) , budget = £698.2 million (202 ...

in 1998 and it is cited in several papers produced by Professor Jean Hartley of the Local Government Consortium. The critical friend is characterised as falling between the extremes of the "hostile witness" and the "uncritical lover"Brighouse, T. and Woods, D. (1999) ''How to Improve your School''. London: Routledge whereas earlier texts go so far as to allude to Janus in discussing the concept. This dichotomy appealed to Hutchinson who frequently used the term while leader of the South East Midlands Citizen's Charter Quality Network run by the Cabinet Office in Whitehall. In his time running the network he came into regular contact with fellow Lancastrian and Government Minister

Peter Kilfoyle Peter Kilfoyle (born 9 June 1946) is a British Labour Party politician who was the Member of Parliament (MP) for Liverpool Walton from 1991 to 2010. Early life The eleventh of fourteen children born to an Irish Catholic family on Merseyside, ...

MP, Public Service Minister who was responsible for the running of the networks as minister. When Kilfoyle found himself increasingly distanced from the policy agenda of Prime Minister

Tony Blair Sir Anthony Charles Lynton Blair (born 6 May 1953) is a British former politician who served as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 1997 to 2007 and Leader of the Labour Party from 1994 to 2007. He previously served as Leader of the ...

and he chose to resign from Government,

Hansard ''Hansard'' is the traditional name of the transcripts of parliamentary debates in Britain and many Commonwealth countries. It is named after Thomas Curson Hansard (1776–1833), a London printer and publisher, who was the first official printe ...

quotes him as saying that he wished to return to the back benches but remain a "critical friend" of the Government. He was misquoted in ''

The Daily Telegraph ''The Daily Telegraph'', known online and elsewhere as ''The Telegraph'', is a national British daily broadsheet newspaper published in London by Telegraph Media Group and distributed across the United Kingdom and internationally. It was f ...

'' as they claimed that he had said that he wished to be a "candid friend" to Government. It is not unreasonable to suppose that the term critical friend has its origins in the softer sounding notion of the candid friend. Nonetheless following the resignation of Peter Kilfoyle ''

The Guardian ''The Guardian'' is a British daily newspaper A newspaper is a periodical publication containing written information about current events and is often typed in black ink with a white or gray background. Newspapers can cover a wide ...

'' newspaper (a popular publication amongst the intelligentsia and public sector middle management) began to popularise the term which is increasingly entering into general usage. The phrase is still most commonly used in education circles but its wider use in the public sector can to a large part be attributed to Andrew Hutchinson and his natural enthusiasm for the concept, being described as 'a natural critical friend acting with positive intent' in 1999 by the then Chief Executive of

Coventry City Council Coventry City Council is the local government body responsible for the governance of the City of Coventry in England, which has been a metropolitan district since 1974. The city is divided up into 18 Wards each with three councillors. Coventr ...

, Iain Roxburgh, who is now Director of the Warwick Research Consortium. While a variety of useful and interesting quotations are to be found on the web perhaps the reason for the popularity of the phrase is best summed up by the following quotation, Critical friends play an important role in decision making, for example in governance of schools where they hold the

head teacher A head master, head instructor, bureaucrat, headmistress, head, chancellor, principal or school director (sometimes another title is used) is the teacher, staff member of a school with the greatest responsibility for the management of the school ...

and other leaders to account, while supporting their wider aims without being

sycophantic In modern English, sycophant denotes an "insincere flatterer" and is used to refer to someone practising sycophancy (i.e., insincere flattery to gain advantage). The word has its origin in the legal system of Classical Athens. Most legal cases o ...

References

{{reflist Education reform Critical pedagogy English phrases Friendship