No sleeping partners: relationships between head teachers and critical friends

Abstract

This article examines external support for school leaders, and focuses on the relationship between head teachers and other professionals who play the role of their ‘critical friends’. Most existing research in this area concentrates upon the activity of the critical friend without reference to the role partner, thereby losing the dynamic in the relationship and the contribution of the head teacher to its effectiveness. A small-scale study of head teachers and their local authority advisers acting as critical friends provides the empirical basis for insights into the nature and challenges of the relationship and points the way to further research in this area of increasing policy significance in England.

Acknowledgments

This article builds on a paper presented at the 2003 Annual Meeting of the American Educational Research Association, Chicago, in the symposium, ‘Talking, working and learning with teachers and school leaders: the Cambridge Symposium’. I am most grateful to the Cambridgeshire head teachers and LEA officers (critical friends and senior advisers) who took part in the study.