“What qualifies you?”: learning how to interrupt via critical friendship

Purpose This collaborative self-study aims to explore the workings and outcomes of a critical friendship. The authors are two colleagues working together across disciplines (Mathematics Education and Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages) who supported each other to come to terms with their pedagogical decisions. Design/methodology/approach In this collaborative self-study, the authors focused on their critical friendship process and how they influenced each other’s personal self-study. The authors helped each other narrow down to three critical teaching incidents that have impacted them and left them with questions via ongoing Zoom conversations and Google docs work. Findings As the authors gave one another feedback on the critical incidents, they challenged each other. In the process, they were both vulnerable by facing hesitancy and discomfort in their teaching. Their critical friendship has enabled them both to achieve greater self-confidence as they grapple with becoming increasingly anti-racist, self-aware teacher educators. Practical implications Critical friendships are essential to develop and study to empower self-study researchers to grow personally and professionally. Originality/value This paper provides a model for how a critical friendship can function as a caring space to confront difficult truths via dynamic meaning-making.