Tensions in communication— Teachers and academic facilitators in a critical friendship

Abstract

This paper concerns the complex relationships between external facilitators and teachers in action research, as they work in a critical friendship to develop interaction in specific ways that open up rather than shut down communication and learning. The aim is to contribute with knowledge about interpersonal communication between academic facilitators and teachers in a development process where the teachers had a lack of influence in the initial phase of the project. The findings reveal that communication in a context of incompatible positions and professional distance did not lead to further communication, whereas communication in a context of confidence, mutual reliance, and challenge opened up possibilities for further dialogue. We identified three aspects affecting communication: absence of ownership of specific problems, trust without relationship, and courage before trust. Implication for the action research community is the importance of making strategies for critical friendship explicit. This assists for teachers to internalize the role.

Keywords

Critical friendship courage ownership shadowing trust academic facilitator

Introduction

It is reasonable to suggest that, within the process of school development and professional learning, the role of a critical friend (CF) is crucial (Groundwater-Smith & Mockler, 2009). However, it is a great challenge for teachers within a school to integrate a CF into their practice, and also for an academic facilitator to be a CF with regard to a practice outside the university. In the Nordic tradition of action research (AR), academic facilitators are often engaged in order to support the professional learning process (Rönnerman, 2008), but there is a contraction in the external role. A relevant question is whether the academic facilitators are doing AR, supporting teachers doing it or both. During the last 10 years in Sweden, the notion of AR has mainly been linked to education within schools, and sometimes used for implementation of national reforms (Rönnerman, Salo & Furu, 2008). In such projects, the role of an external person as a facilitator or a CF can be difficult to handle. AR projects decided and planned without negotiations with participating teachers tend to be a challenge especially in the initial phase (Greenwood & Levin, 1998). Our intention is to contribute to knowledge about the community of practice among academic facilitators. Even though there are different local conditions to be considered in every AR project, we wanted to learn more about our communication with participating teachers and share our challenges about critical friendship with other facilitators.

The present study was carried out within a five-year professional learning project designed as a partnership between a school and a university. The project was school wide, with an AR approach in which the teachers and two academic facilitators (first and second author) worked together to improve teaching. The facilitators were supposed to take the role of a CF in order to facilitate professional learning (Wennergren, 2014). Since the school’s level of achievement had been extremely low for a long period of time, the district management decided that the school must participate in a project. The AR approach was considered a long-term goal of the project.

The role of a critical friendship is often embedded in processes of change where strong emotions might occur (Furu, 2008). Although school-university partnerships involve collaboration, there is an asymmetrical relationship to manage, where the outsider can be considered either as a contributor of fresh perspectives or as a threat related to norms that have been taken for granted for many years. With our experiences of AR in collaboration, communication built on dialogues demands a high degree of trust, courage, and risk taking (Wennergren, 2014; Wennergren & Rönnerman, 2006). A great challenge for a successful partnership between CFs is to create conditions for dialogues and learning as well as developing professional feedback between participants. Promoting teacher agency in students’ learning, as a facilitator, has many similarities to promoting student learning as a teacher, given that many factors may occur as parallel processes for both students and teachers in learning to learn (McLaughlin, 2000). According to Timperley (2011), the main difference is that teachers must apply their learning to themselves as well as to their students. However, in our study, we would suggest that applying learning to ourselves, as facilitators, is as essential as it is for teachers. Parallel learning processes in school-based AR projects do not occur separately; instead they interact, affect, and support each other (Wennergren, 2014).

The aim is to contribute with knowledge about interpersonal communication between academic facilitators and teachers in a development process where the teachers had a lack of influence in the initial phase of the project. The research question that pertains to the study is: What aspects affect communication between academic facilitators and teachers?

Central components in critical friendship

In this section, we focus on the concept of a CF as it relates to AR. Three critical issues for CF that are important for our study are presented: trust, courage, and ownership of a local problem.

Critical friendship

The intention of the supporting role for an academic facilitator in school development processes can in the current study be compared to taking the role of a CF (Wennergren, 2015). The term critical friend has a long history, and is often used in schools to support changes and raise standards (cf. Bambino, 2003; Costa & Kallick, 1993; Swaffield, 2007). The characteristic of a CF is the combination of a friendship built on trust, support, and affirmation, together with a criticism based on analysis, assessment, evaluation, and quality (Handal, 1999; Swaffield, 2007). Combining the words critical and friend is difficult, as we often perceive them as noncompatible. However, in our study, the combination of these words as necessary counterparts is crucial. Handal (1999) stresses that a mutual critical friendship involves an obligation to analyze and criticize. A critical friendship could imply a sincere and well-founded response, but this presupposes competence and ability. It also includes a personal relationship and basic trust (Baskerville & Goldblatt, 2009). Having a CF is considered to be a strategy for professional feedback and feed-forward (Wennergren, 2014). Thus, it involves perceiving the world from different perspectives, and moving away from previous experiences that may have allowed certain thoughts, actions, and events to be taken for granted.

The term friendly outsider is sometimes used in AR literature and refers to something similar to a CF (Greenwood & Levin, 1998). The authors emphasize that the development of expert AR skills is a process of several stages that both practitioners and academic facilitators must master to be effective. As pointed out by Ponte (2002), AR is concerned not only with new knowledge, skills, and attitudes but also with the complexity of mastering all these aspects simultaneously. However, all of these aspects are necessary in order to carry out and master AR as a whole. It is not possible to separate aspects and learn them one by one. In a study of two education advisers, the specific process of learning to be a CF was identified as involving five steps: professional indifference, tentative trust, reliance, conviction, and unguarded conversations (Baskerville & Goldblatt, 2009). The tension between friend and critical was obvious and the progression of mutual respect was essential for the relationship to be able to develop over time.

As researchers/facilitators, our prior experiences as academic facilitators in AR projects differed: one of us was very experienced while the other two were rather inexperienced. In the section below, we have defined possible tensions in a critical friendship in terms of three critical issues, closely related to our project: trust, courage, and the ownership of local problems.

The first critical issue: Trust

Trust is a little like air—we pay little attention to it until is not there. (Hoy & Tarter, 2004, p. 253)

In the research literature on critical friendship, trust is identified as one of the most important factors for learning (Baskerville & Goldblatt, 2009; Swaffield, 2007). Achieving trust is very dependent on personal relationships. As relationships demand closeness, arriving at a critical friendship may be rather problematic for an external facilitator. However, it may be possible to create trust on other premises based on knowledge about learning, methods, or analytical tools that can be used for understanding teaching practices.

McLaughlin and Black-Hawkins (2004) discuss the use of language, and whether some assumptions are considered more valuable than others. They emphasize the difficulty of engaging in a joint partnership without holding certain key values as necessary. Some of these values are identified as asking questions about practice, collecting evidence, reflecting on practice and data, and considering partnership to be valuable. The asymmetric relationship between academic facilitators and teachers is a crucial aspect for communication based on dialogue. Bakhtin (1981) argued that there is great value in being able to perceive differences in dialogues, where learning implies changing opinions and gaining an understanding of something new.

Another aspect is feedback, where a CF tries to find a balance between positive confirmations and challenges. Too uncritical a feedback does not support learning, whereas overly challenging feedback goes beyond what is possible to accept. In other words, the purpose of cooperation is to meet the colleague in her or his zone of proximal development (Vygotsky, 1978). For an external facilitator, it might be possible to improve trust by providing feedback close to the observation session. The way in which positive confirmation is provided may also affect the level of challenges that the teacher is able to accept (Wennergren & Rönnerman et al., 2006).

The second critical issue: Courage

Trust is fundamental to organisational justice in schools. We would go further and claim that it is courage, which allows trust to grow and flourish, that is the bedrock of professional collegiality whether in schools or academic institutions. (Groundwater-Smith & Mockler, 2009, p. 31)

With regard to the quotation, there may be different opinions about what comes first in changing procedures: courage or trust. For learner agency, the ownership of change is central and the question of courage and trust must be explicit before acting in practice. As learning is an uncomfortable enterprise, professional learning requires courage. Willingness to improve, and to take action together with colleagues, also emanates from trust and a moral responsibility for the local context (Loughran, 2010).

Learning about your own practice, in order to perceive it from different perspectives, also means pushing boundaries. By taking the risk of doing something new, different, or uncertain, one’s understanding of learning is enhanced (Loughran, 2010). As the author emphasizes, we believe the power of courage in school development processes to be a driving force to action and to willingness to step outside the comfort zone. Challenges and risk taking always occur in situations involving relationships and emotions (Furu, 2008), and Hargreaves (2002) argues for trust as the emotional catalyst that makes risks and conflicts an essential part of professional learning.

There is a need for awareness of emotions in all processes of change, in all phases. Emotions affect us differently and if they do not have an outlet or are not channelled, they can be counterproductive and lead to resistance and frustration. However, it is possible to influence emotions in favor of change. Furu (2008) refers to several authors who show that emotions can motivate both actions and changes in actions. The author also compares thoughts with emotions and emphasizes that thoughts can drive us to do something, but emotions must be released before anything can happen.

The third critical issue: Ownership (of local problems)

Findings of local problems tend to provide fuel for changes and further improvements but to really change we have to ask whether the discomfort of experiencing something new, and being less certain during the process, is too risky a project or whether it is an important attribute in improving teaching. (Wennergren, 2015, p. 16)

Colleagues in a CF partnership are expected to participate with engagement in local problems. The process to identify specific problems takes time and it can be a great challenge to achieve ownership and address critical reflections to your own practice. A teacher and an academic facilitator do not share the same practice. However, it should be possible to support and learn together and it might be possible to identify a shared practice as a community of learning. Teachers are developing their teaching practices, facilitators are developing their facilitating practices and together it might be possible to participate in a shared professional learning community (Hargreaves & Fullan, 2012).

An AR project is often constructed as a professional learning community, in which improvements of teaching are addressed to student needs (DuFour, 2004; Stoll et al., 2006). With such a starting point, the local problems cannot be identified outside of the school and the external facilitator can only be used as a supporter in the process of identifying authentic problems. Greenwood and Levin (1998) suggest that “the question to be researched must be of major importance to the participants or the process will go nowhere” (p. 116). A community of learning cannot be imposed by outsiders, but is created by those who share concerns, problems, and needs. A learning community is also characterized by mutual engagement in procedures, tools, concepts, language, and different ways of acting, i.e., a shared repertoire (cf. Wenger, 1998). Dialogues during a development process allow different stories, reflections, and perspectives to meet, which are an indication of the legitimacy of acting as each other’s CFs.

Research procedure

The local context

The school in question for the project was located within a small town in a rural setting in southern Sweden and was comprised of a primary and a secondary school (students aged 6–16 years). According to national statistics (Swedish National Agency for Education, 2015), over several years the school had identified obvious needs to improve student learning and achievement. Leaders at a district level did set up action plans and contributed with resources, but neither teaching nor school results improved.

Finally, the district management decided to establish a long-term commitment between the university and the school. Teacher participation in the partnership was mandatory. All 35 teachers at the school were supposed to take an active role in the process in order to improve their own practices and, and as a consequence, the school’s results. The project was designed with the intention of establishing a long-term AR project and was planned to run for five years; this paper only concerns the first and second year. Overall structures for professional learning were set up in cooperation with district leaders, head teachers, teachers, and academic facilitators. Sessions for professional learning included a regular series of lectures and conversations in whole group sessions, facilitation, and literature seminars in small groups, observations in pairs, and individual reading of literature, requiring an average of five hours per week. A central part of the project was based on systematic inquiries in the classroom with support from academic facilitators (Wennergren, 2014).

Regular observations by the facilitator were performed as shadowing sessions—an interactive observation method (Wennergren & Rönnerman, 2006; Czarniawska, 2007; McDonald, 2005) that includes both descriptive documentation and critical feedback on teaching (Table 1). In the first column in the shadowing log, the facilitator wrote descriptions of the teaching sessions by literally writing down what took place, or by retelling it with varying degrees of interpretation. In the second column, the facilitator wrote reflections about the teaching in focus and in the third, the teacher later on wrote his or her reflections. After a shadowing session, the teacher and the facilitator had a short conversation and, within days, the protocols with descriptions, reflections, and an invitation to add further reflections were e-mailed.

Table 1.

Shadowing log (SL).

Column 1: Description of teaching (the observer)

Column 2: Critical reflections and feedback (the observer)

Column 3: Comments of column 1 and 2 (the observed teacher)

For the first two years of the project, two academic facilitators offered shadowing on a voluntary basis in order to support changes. They were invited by teachers to document and provide feedback of teaching as CFs. During the second year, and beyond the present study, teachers also cooperated with a colleague as a CF and used shadowing as a tool for documentation of teaching (cf. Wennergren, 2015). They started with a plan and then moved forward in an AR process (plan, act, observe, reflect).

Authors 1 and 2 had different responsibilities within the project: both acted as facilitators and researchers, with author 2 as the project leader at the University. Author 3 was not engaged in the project but was an important research colleague. During the project, we were all engaged in a reflection group at the University. Initially, we individually identified critical aspects of facilitator situations to present in the group through transcripts or formulated cases. Then, we shared and critically reviewed the data and prepared critical questions to discuss. Our varied amount of experience in AR enriched our potential to learn from one another.

Data and data analysis

The main data consists of observations of whole group sessions (34 pages) and shadowing logs (51 pages), while field notes were used to verify the findings. Altogether, eight whole group meetings were conducted, lasting 3 hours each, and 15 shadowing sessions. The analysis can be divided into inductive and deductive sections and is inspired by the structures of content analysis (Graneheim & Lundman, 2004).

Inductive analysis

Reading the data: An intense and repeated reading of the material led to an overall picture of the content.

Searching for similar patterns and meaning units: Overarching meaning units in the material emerged, and a need to divide the material taking into consideration different activities and situations.

Coded data: The data was coded to separate whole group meetings and shadowing sessions, after which the deductive part of the analysis commenced.

Deductive analysis

Re-reading the data: In order to identify different types of communication between facilitators and teachers the data was thoroughly re-read.

Coding data in terms of feedback and feed-forward: Data of feedback and feed-forward were coded and divided into five themes, each with particular features, representing prominent characters in the material. In this phase, we were inspired by literature such as Baskerville and Goldblatt (2009). At a school-wide level, relating to whole group meetings, the following themes emerged: Communication as incompatible positions and Communication as confidence endeavor. Related to shadowing sessions, the themes were: Communication as professional distance, Communication as reliance and challenge, and Communication as unconditional.

Coding additional data: Finally, field notes were analyzed and coded in order to verify the themes.

Findings

The overview of the findings is described in terms of communication between facilitators and teachers in tables 2 and 3:

In the following, the findings are presented with examples of situations at a school-wide level and in shadowing situations; the latter are observations of teaching, where the facilitator’s written feedback to the teacher and the teacher’s responses are examined as communication between them. The two facilitators are mentioned as “the facilitator” in the third person. The teachers have been given fictitious names.

Table 2.

Communication between facilitators and teachers at a school-wide level.

1: Facilitator	2: Teacher	3. Way of communicating
Objective comments	Frustrated emotions	Communication as incompatible positions
Focuses on emotions and encourages engagement	Provides energy and continues reflection	Communication as confidence endeavor

Table 3.

Communication between facilitators and teachers in shadowing situations.

1: Facilitator	2: Teacher	3. Way of communicate
Asks demanding questions and refers to theory	Defends himself or herself	Communication as professional distance
Describes and challenges	Continues reflection and takes up the challenge	Communication as reliance and challenge
Confirming the teacher	Critical analysis	Communication as unconditional

Situations at a school-wide level

Communication between facilitators and teachers is characterized by a development from incompatible positions, where an objective distance from the facilitator and personal frustrations from the teachers are prominent, to communication as a confidence endeavor, where facilitators and teachers strive for each other’s trust.

Communication as incompatible positions

The first whole group meeting with the teachers took place two months after the decision that the school was to be engaged in an AR project. The facilitator’s task was to describe the different ideas and concepts of AR. She was nervous and very uncertain about the outcome of the meeting. From her position in front of the group, the audience gave obvious signals of strong negative emotions, which were difficult to handle but quite understandable due to the decision of the project having been made with no teacher influence. After an initial presentation of ideas concerning “teacher inquiry,” some positive comments and questions occurred, but the response of silence was the most prominent. The main conclusion stated by a majority of the teachers was that the project contained too many risks to their welfare. For example, they were concerned that the project would consume their valuable time, and that they would be questioned and exposed as professionals. For the facilitator, during this initial phase of the project, the challenge was to simultaneously invest in relations and handle emotions within the group of teachers. She made a choice not to confront teachers’ frustrations concerning the decision made by leaders at a district level. The situation was complicated to deal with and new questions kept occurring. Nevertheless, it was her active choice not to illuminate her own negative emotions or frustrations. The positions of the facilitator and the teachers appeared to be incompatible. The facilitator’s way of objectively trying to describe the project was neither compatible with the teachers’ personal frustrations nor relevant to them at the time. The facilitator concluded that the importance of considering changes from different perspectives was crucial for a mutual engagement in communication with the teachers.

Communication as confidence endeavour

From the facilitator’s point of view, the first and second year of the project was a process of passive and active resistance from one third of the teachers, while two thirds seemed to be involved in a process of struggling to develop ownership. The latter process included a process of learning to handle strong emotions with their ups and downs. In order to focus on the frustrations, the facilitator started to talk regularly about emotions in processes of change in whole group situations, and explicitly used the concept of being in “the pit” when setbacks occurred or when feelings of resignation were overwhelming.

At one point when it was especially tough, the facilitator called on everyone to contribute with energy by sharing positive remarks with a colleague and to write about it in the reflection paper at the end of the session. A teacher who had become particularly engaged in the session expressed in the reflections that she had a lot to learn, and described the process as both confusing and comfortable. Another teacher, who contributed a lot, emphasized his concerns and confusions about his forthcoming inquiry in class. The teacher hoped that his courage in sharing his own experiences would be important for his colleagues’ learning processes. Altogether, the communication between the facilitator and teachers was characterized as a striving for establishing confidence, as confidence endeavor. Both parties opened up and began to acknowledge each other, implying some components of trust.

Shadowing situations

In this section, the character of the communication between the facilitator and the teacher in the shadowing sessions is presented. As mentioned earlier, the shadowing sessions were an essential part of the project. These sessions implied having the facilitator in the classroom observing and giving feedback in written text during the regular school schedule. Here, the communication between the facilitator and the teachers is characterized by a development from professional distance to communication as unconditional.

Communication as professional distance

Different ways of giving feedback in written communication appeared in the sessions. When the facilitator asked demanding questions, seeking explanations as an academic and using terms not embedded in the local school context, the teachers defended themselves and tried to explain and argue for their actions, implying that this strategy did not lead to further communication. Communication as professional distance between facilitator and teacher appeared. In one classroom, the teacher introduced a new language theme for the class, focused on writing a letter to an editor. The facilitator reflected:

How can the learning outcomes be clarified? What are the students supposed to learn? Which learning concepts are central? In your oral instructions, the performance, not the learning, is in focus (facilitator).

In the quotation, the facilitator seems to have an ambition to appear as a knowledgeable academic by asking several questions in a row about learning. This way of asking questions has the function of questioning the teacher’s intentions in her teaching, i.e., her professional knowledge and way of being a teacher. She then states that the teacher’s instructions focus on performance instead of learning, which enhances her way of questioning the teacher. The teacher reflected:

I am carefully choosing how I express myself in these contexts. The students are supposed to learn how to write an argumentative text, in this case a letter to the editor. It’s easy for me to say ‘Today we’re writing a letter to the editor’ instead of ‘Today you are going to learn how to write a letter to the editor’. Here, my idea was to make a brief presentation of the structure of the task before the students lose their interest. (teacher Anne, SL)

In the reflection above, the teacher is trying to legitimize both her teaching and her intentions. By positioning herself as professional and knowledgeable, she distinctly challenges the way she was positioned by the facilitator and defends herself as a teacher. This seems to aim at making the facilitator realize that she is very much aware of how to express herself. The teacher then partly agrees with the facilitator by emphasizing how easy it is to tell the students what they are going to do instead of what they are going to learn. Finally, the teacher refers to her knowledge of the students, the class, and their ability to concentrate. That may imply that she is diminishing the importance, or relevance, of the questions asked by the facilitator, as the only one who really knows the pupils and is capable of creating good conditions for learning is the teacher herself.

Altogether, the facilitator’s way of asking demanding questions resulted in the teacher explaining and defending herself in an attempt to justify her actions in the classroom. Rather than a communication, a pattern of questions and answers appeared as a cross-examination. Here, professional distance leads to a gap between the facilitator’s presentation of herself as a proficient academic and the teacher’s defence of her teacher role, which altogether prevents mutual communication.

The facilitator also tried to ask questions by referring to theoretical literature. Again, the facilitator as an academic and the teacher appear to be distanced from each other. Again, issues are referred to that the teacher did not find relevant. The reflection below relates to an observation in a science lesson on the universe:

I’m thinking about students' participation during the lesson related to learning according to Liberg’s theory. Where are the students situated in this model and how could their participation be expanded? I’m also thinking about which abilities are being practised during the lesson and what the students learn. In the presentation of the universe at the beginning of the lesson, by using the local environment as a metaphor, it seems like the students’ abstraction ability is challenged. They are invited to be in their zone of proximal development. I wonder how many students are situated in their ZPD when they are working in groups later on during the lesson. (facilitator, SL)

Above, the facilitator’s ambition to be perceived as academically knowledgeable by referring theories of learning appears again. This is supposed to legitimize and strengthen her reflections and questions about student abilities and learning, making them more solid, and to question the teacher’s knowledge about learning theories related to teaching practice. However, by doing so she makes the teacher accountable for delivering “correct answers” related to both literature references and classroom practice, i.e., she challenges the teacher as a professional. Finally, she challenges the teacher by asking a question about the continuation of the lesson, in order to increase her position as an expert. The teacher reflected:

Students’ participation: The students are undoubtedly situated on one of the basic levels in learning according to Liberg, most likely at the level “participation without own contributions”. As problematic as it might seem, I’m not particularly worried. They are at the very beginning of exploring his subject matter, and from experience I can tell that most of them develop. Basically, they should have been practising this since primary school but it doesn’t seem that way. I simply have to start from scratch, which easily results in a more passive participation. (teacher Matthew, SL)

Above, the teacher strongly legitimizes himself as a teacher by emphasizing his knowledge about theories of learning and classroom teaching. At the beginning, he develops the reference to the learning theory in question by specifically situating his students at a certain level. By doing so, he appears as theoretically skilled, showing that he is just as proficient as the facilitator. Next, he adds his professional knowledge, making the facilitator appear as less knowledgeable. Finally, he blames primary school for the students’ level, which forces him to start from the beginning. This implies incapable students, which enhances his own unexceptionable competence and decreases his significance in the situation at hand.

The facilitator is trying to legitimize the feedback and appears as a proficient academic by referring to theory to confirm her statements. Instead of opening up communication, the teacher defends his actions in the classroom and explains them by referring to the students’ lack of experience, blaming them for his way of teaching. Thus, he also defends himself as a teacher. Again, professional distance characterizes the communication between the teacher and the facilitator. There is a distinct distance between their positions that prevents constructive communication.

Communication as reliance and challenge

The facilitator decided to explore other ways of making reflections that, hopefully, could promote further communication. This happened when a few teachers decided to re-invite the facilitator for additional shadowing sessions. She began with open reflections related to classroom actions, a way of trying to recognize the teachers’ integrity. The communication is characterized by reliance and challenge. There is a growing confidence between them, expressed in the facilitator’s way of challenging the teacher. The following reflection related to an observation in mathematics where the students orally reflected upon what they had learnt.

The pupils’ reflections on their learning are more oriented towards the structure of the lesson and formulations than towards new ways of problem solving. (facilitator, SL)

In this reflection, the facilitator reasons about a classroom situation by referring to pupils’ reflections. She reasons about the situation at hand and describes what happens. By doing so, she opens up the possibility of further communication. The teacher reflects:

Interesting, sometimes the structure might be a way of problem solving but it shouldn’t be an obstacle. (teacher Elisabeth, SL)

In the quotation above, the teacher continues the reflection made by the facilitator. By doing so, she appears as an equal partner in the discussion. This leads to her continuation of the reflections by thinking ahead, challenging herself, and opening up to further communication. Communication as reliance and challenge appears, with the former seeming to be a precondition for the latter.

Communication as unconditional

In an observation, the teacher was presenting the concept of “scale” for the students in mathematics. Here, the facilitator’s and the teacher’s communication is characterized as unconditional, as neither of them are guarding their own positions; instead they are trusting each other and sharing mutual interest in the activities in the classroom. As in the theme of communication as reliance and challenge, unconditional communication also appeared in observations of some of the teachers over more than one shadowing session. The facilitator’s way of confirming the teacher leads to the teacher’s critical reflections on her own teaching.

The teacher uses something familiar to the students, the football field, as the driving force. Some of the students show their own motivation and give their own examples: orientation maps and a grain of sand in a reverse scale. (facilitator, SL)

The facilitator is confirming the teacher’s teaching by positively describing what happens. She refers to the teacher’s ability to motivate her students by using the familiar football field as an example related to a concept. She also describes the outcome of the way the teacher motivates her students, as they give their own examples. Overall, she encourages and is interested in the teacher and her teaching. The teacher writes in her reflections:

The students do not start working with the task. I walk around doing “pep-talk”. What was I suppose to motivate them to, what was the goal for learning. (teacher Sophie, SL)?

The teacher reflects further about the students’ activity and about herself. She neither gives examples of how to act differently nor defends her actions in the classroom. She critically but constructively describes the situation at hand and asks herself about the goal for learning, showing trust in the dialogue and being open to further changes. This way of opening up for further communication was interesting, given that it encouraged the teacher to ask questions instead of the facilitator, questions that emanate from an open reflection on the description of the situation at hand.

Discussion and conclusions

With this paper, the ambition is to contribute with knowledge about interpersonal communication between academic facilitators and teachers in a development process. In the section below, arguments concerning broader contexts than the findings will be addressed. Such generalizations might be seen as ambiguous but are made in order to critically reflect and debate on issues of quality in critical friendship as central components of collaboration in AR. Our three critical issues, trust, courage, and ownership, emanate from the concept of critical friendship presented at the beginning of the paper.

The main conclusion of our study is that communication based on the concept of a critical friendship between facilitator and teacher only succeeded in a few cases at this stage of the development process. More specifically, three aspects have affected communication in a context where teachers had no influence in the decision to start the project: (1) absence of ownership in specific problems, (2) trust without relationship, and (3) courage before trust.

In oral communication with all teachers, it was obvious that the local problem, low student achievement results, was too general to be owned and transferred into individual teaching sessions. Although the teachers continuously tried several solutions to raise the standards of teaching, the general problem was not of major importance to them (cf. Greenwood & Lewin, 1998). It was no wonder that the written communication in shadowing sessions required a process of conceptualizing specific problems for the individual teacher. It was a process of struggle to achieve ownership and during that process the facilitators did not always consider the local context. In parallel, it seemed to be a process of struggle for the facilitators to formulate specific feedback. They focused on aspects that did not seem to be relevant and the teachers received questions they did not ask for. The facilitators did not always show trust in the teachers’ professional knowledge, and without a professional relationship it was a long journey to achieving legitimacy (cf. Baskerville & Goldblatt, 2009; Swaffield, 2007).

When the facilitators tried to achieve trust built on theories, this seemed to confirm the outsider position rather than open up the possibility of dialogue in terms of Bakhtin (1981). When giving feedback from different perspectives, the facilitator acted with distance and it was difficult for the teacher to participate on equal terms. Instead, they were supposed to consider issues with few opportunities to direct the conversation in other directions. Several teachers showed frustration, defended themselves, and had no interest in prolonging the communication. It was obvious that the words critical and friend were difficult to combine. Both words appeared to be strongly dependent on the context and seemed to be non-compatible in some relationships and compatible in others (Groundwater-Smith & Mockler, 2009). The possibility of becoming a CF might be dependent on basic trust in each other’s good intentions, but also on the levels of each other’s competence and skills when used feedback in action (cf. Handal, 1999; Ponte, 2002).

However, it was possible to build trust with a few individual teachers who showed courage at an early stage in the project. When the facilitator had noticed the teachers’ needs and encouraged them to engage, they also gave invitations to a regular dialogue about specific problems identified in the individuals’ teaching. Thus, the importance of a shared interest, rather than a perceived need for a theoretical basis, seems to be crucial for making communication with an external CF possible. The ways in which the facilitator communicated with the teachers seem to be interdependent with the ways in which the teachers responded (McLaughlin, 2000). The importance of courage when taking a step outside the comfort zone in new situations concerns facilitators as well as teachers (Loughran, 2010). Since the facilitator, early in the project, decided to invest in relations without showing emotions, this may have created a counterproductive situation. As Furu (2008) emphasizes, there is an urgent need for awareness of emotions in all phases in processes of change. Our insight is that showing emotions in front of a whole group of teachers either contributes to a deeper frustration, or in some cases, to a professional relationship. This might explain why components of mutual challenges and risk taking only occurred in a few shadowing sessions.

In all processes of change, there are contradictions and tensions. The most powerful tension in this project was the starting point; with the decision from district leaders that every teacher in the school should participate. Ideally, an AR project should emanate from a bottom up perspective where the participants are involved and engaged in the design of the project (cf. Rönnerman, 2008). However, the present project is considered to be of relevance to the AR community as it actually resulted in school improvement. During a short period of time, the school results have increased remarkably according to the national score (Swedish National Agency for Education, 2015). After three years, it was possible to conclude that a top–down-based project can be transformed into a bottom–up-based implementation, but not all at once (Wennergren, 2014, 2015). This implicates that the teachers gradually gained an ownership of the process, which makes such a design useful.

In this project, implementing tools for school development was a procedure of “learning for all” given that two out of three authors were inexperienced in AR. Since it takes efforts to become a skilled facilitator, the tools were not used in the most effective way. It was obvious that both methodological knowledge and procedural skills had to be internalized in order to be able to support and promote teachers in a development process. Furthermore, there are contradictions for an external facilitator in the role of a CF in AR projects (Groundwater-Smith & Mockler, 2009; Rönnerman, 2008). From our experience, the need for an external supporter or a CF is different in schools with low results compared with successful schools. A school struggling with low results, as our study reveals, might have difficulties with identifying the real problem or need for support from an outsider. A school with great results might have time to analyze and identify problematic areas and then ask for support by a facilitator (CF), whether an insider or an outsider. In our project, we did not reach the level of critical friendship in communication with all teachers, which is a great challenge for collaboration in AR. Consequently, it is crucial that we as facilitators, and as action researchers in general, formulate explicit strategies for gradually giving the teachers more responsibility for being an active part in critical friendships, both with outsiders and with insiders.

Footnotes

Acknowledgement

Many thanks are due to the teachers and school leaders in the school university partnership in question. The study would not have been possible to perform without their documentation. Also, we are grateful to two anonymous reviewers for the Action Research Journal for their constructive comments on a previous draft of our paper. We would also like to thank Dr. Davydd Greenwood for leading the review process of this article. Should there be any comments/reactions you wish to share, please bring them to the interactive portion of our blog on the associated AR+| ActionResearchPlus website: .

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The author(s) disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: This paper is one of several interlinked studies in a research project with financial support from the Swedish Research Council (grant number 2012-5953).

Author biographies

Marie-Helene Zimmerman Nilsson, PhD, is Senior Lecturer in School of Education, Humanities and Social Sciences, Halmstad University, Sweden. Her main research interests concern collaborative action research, discourse analysis related to teacher education, and post-humanist theory related to early childhood education.

Ann-Christine Wennergren, PhD, is Associate Professor in School of Education, Humanities and Social Sciences, Halmstad University, Sweden. Her main research interests are based on partnerships between schools and the University and concerns tools and structures for teacher professional learning and school improvement.

Ulrika Sjöberg, PhD, is Associate Professor in School of Arts and Communication, Malmö University, Sweden. Her main research interests involve children and young people's media practices in terms of usage, media production and media literacy, as well as issues concerning methodology.

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