Navigating Evolving Digital Spaces of Teaching and Learning Through Critical Friendship: Arts-Based Self-Study of Two Teacher Educators

We are two South African teacher educators who responded to an increasingly challenging educational environment during the COVID-19 pandemic. This paper reflects on our critical friendship journey during the pandemic as we navigated evolving digital teaching and learning spaces such as Zoom, Learn/2021/2022, Microsoft Teams, and WhatsApp. Framing our study within a sociocultural theoretical perspective motivated us to understand more deliberately and to embrace social phenomena to strengthen our pedagogy. We present our self-study research in which we used arts-based methods to explore the critical friendship we forged. Arts-based methods facilitate critical reflection and dialogue through creative engagement with materials such as objects, collages, and images. Utilising the arts enabled us to generate and analyse the data. Self-study research entails learning through collaboration while considering others’ contributions to improve one’s practice. These others may be supervisors, colleagues, or critical friends. Critical friends may be from the same or different disciplines, or they may be colleagues and peers at different phases in their profession. Through this journey, our critical friendship became a viable source of support and a space for development.