benefits of critical thinking in friendship

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Learning in friendship groups: developing students’ conceptual understanding through social interaction

Carl senior.

1 Department of Psychology (SW509b), School of Life and Health Sciences, Aston University, Birmingham, UK

Chris Howard

2 Psychology Department, University of Derby, Derby, UK

The role that student friendship groups play in learning was investigated here. Employing a critical realist design, two focus groups on undergraduates were conducted to explore their experience of studying. Data from the “case-by-case” analysis suggested student-to-student friendships produced social contexts which facilitated conceptual understanding through discussion, explanation, and application to “real life” contemporary issues. However, the students did not conceive this as a learning experience or suggest the function of their friendships involved learning. These data therefore challenge the perspective that student groups in higher education are formed and regulated for the primary function of learning. Given these findings, further research is needed to assess the role student friendships play in developing disciplinary conceptual understanding.

INTRODUCTION

There is an extensive literature conducted from a range of theoretical perspectives and methodologies on the role of groups and student learning in higher education (see Haggis, 2009 ; Lundberg, 2014 ). The concept of the “group” is heavily contested within this literature with discrepancies in the formation, structure, size, duration, and function ( Baron and Kerr, 2003 ; Forsyth, 2009 ). Despite this, within higher education (HE) practice, characterizing the “group” has tended to be more clear-cut. Groups of students are often constructed within the parameters of a particular educational program by tutors to address an explicitly defined learning objective (see Boud et al., 2001 ). From this perspective, student groups tend to be small scale (e.g., 2–5 members), function within the confines of the classroom and achieve tasks through cooperative or collaborative learning ( Bruffee, 1993 ). Cooperative learning involves students dividing roles and responsibilities between group members, so learning becomes an independent process and outcome. On the other hand, collaborative learning involves students working together by developing shared meanings and knowledge to solve a task or problem ( Dillenbourg et al., 1996 , Dillenbourg, 1999 ). From this perspective, learning is conceptualized as a social process but also one that ultimately results in an individual outcome. That is, collaborative learning may facilitate individual conceptual understanding and higher-order thinking ( Gillies, 2000 ).

The above perspectives on group learning both assume that groups are formed within the confines of formal learning environments (e.g., lecture theaters), involve students on the same degree program and have the explicit function of achieving a learning task. However, we have previously shown that student groups also tend to form spontaneously outside of the lecture room without the intervention of a tutor ( Senior et al., 2012 ; see also Havnes, 2008 ); but, their function tends to remain centered on achieving an agreed and defined outcome by group members (e.g., the completion of a learning task). In this light, groups may disband once the task is completed by group members ( Davies, 2009 ). The findings from the current study show that students use existing social networks such as friends as well as organized study groups as a mechanism for learning. Moreover, students may have used the social contexts in which they interacted with their friends outside of the classroom to further their understanding of disciplinary concepts in Psychology. However, the students did not conceive this to be a learning experience or suggest the function of their friendship groups involved learning. In this light, the current study suggests, in some contexts, students may not create, develop, and regulate groups for the function of learning as suggested in the literature (see Wenger, 1998 ; Borzillo and Probst, 2008 ; Orsmond et al., 2013 ) but use existing social groups as primae facie contexts in which to learn through social interaction. We refer to this as an “implicit community,” where tasks or events are achieved collaboratively but there is no awareness of the actual learning process or the subsequent outcome. This paper is divided into four sections: (1) theoretical accounts of student learning and groups; (2) the role of friendship groups and student learning; (3) discussion of the focus group methodology informed by critical realism which was employed to explore the role between groups and student learning; (4) the extent to which friendship groups regulated student understanding of disciplinary concepts (cognitive accounts of learning) or facilitated the development of disciplinary identities (social accounts of learning).

STUDENT LEARNING AND GROUPS

Within the literature on student learning, cognitive approaches have tended to be the most influential with regard policy and practice (see Entwistle, 2001 , 2009 ). From a cognitive perspective, learning is conceived in terms of information processing, achieved through the interplay of cognitive structures and processes ( Marton and Pang, 2006 ). In this light, learning is construed as an individualistic outcome, best measured by the “depth” and “quality” of information processing. This underpins the distinction between “surface” and “deep” approaches to learning ( Marton and Säljö, 1976 ), which has historically had a significant impact on the way in which the student experience has been analyzed, measured, and discussed ( Richardson, 1990 ; Webb, 1997 ). Moreover, a surface approach involves superficial processing of information, which is categorized by memorization, whereas a deep approach involves a deeper level processing of information, which is characterized by conceptual “understanding” ( Entwistle, 2001 ).

Over recent years in HE both undergraduate and postgraduate programs have tended to be designed to provide opportunity for students to work collaboratively and even in some cases across national boundaries ( Dolmans et al., 2001 ; Keay et al., 2014 ; Rienties et al., in press ). Here, students tend to be organized into small scale “groups,” which are designed to complete specific tasks that correspond to formalized learning objectives ( Davies, 2009 ). This conceptualization of the “group” centers on Lewin’s (1948) notion of “interdependence,” where the success of individual group members is bound to the success of the group completing the task. The concept of the “group” in this context follows a stage driven approach, which is often employed in organizational settings ( Reid and Hammersley, 2000 ). That is, the group forms for the purpose of completing a task, roles are assigned to group members, norms are established and the group disbands once its aim has been achieved (see Tuckman, 1965 ; Baron and Kerr, 2003 ). Within this framework, groups may employ principles from cooperative learning, where each member has a distinct role and largely works independently to achieve a task. Whereas, collaborative learning involves students working together, so roles may become interdependent or blurred ( Bruffee, 1993 ). However, within these groups the emphasis is on the role of the course tutor who is central to the group development and hence its success as a potential learning device ( Boud, 2001 ; Lancaster and Strand, 2001 ; Curseu and Pluut, 2013 ).

The evidence on the relationship between student groups and learning is encouraging from a pedagogic perspective. Barton et al. (2005) found students working in groups were more likely to score higher on an “openness to experience” scale that is significantly associated with a deep approach to learning ( Zhang, 2003 ) compared to students who studied alone. Additional support was revealed by our previous work where it was found that students who completed a coursework task in a group significantly achieved a higher grade than students who completed a coursework task alone ( Senior et al., 2012 ). The benefits of group work are such that it promotes “active” learning characterized by students engaging with a learning task and the development of wide portfolio of critical thinking skills ( Gokhale, 1995 ). Group work may also increase students’ self-efficacy and motivation ( Davies, 2009 ). Whilst the experience of working in groups may facilitate conceptual understanding, it additionally provides an opportunity to develop inter-personal skills which in turn may lead to an improvement in subsequent employability ( Senior and Cubbidge, 2010 ; Senior et al., 2014 ) or as Mello (1993) argues, prepares students for the “real world” with the opportunity to develop social skills that are very likely to be required after graduation (see also Tymon, 2013 ).

Unfortunately student experiences working within such learning groups are not universally positive and some do report negative experiences. Those students who do not readily perceive the benefit of group work may not engage and subsequently interact with other group members ( Walker, 2001 ). In turn, this may lead to negative outcomes such as “free riding” where some group members benefit from the accomplishments of others in the group but they do not contribute themselves ( Salomon and Globerson, 1989 ). In the context of higher education, collectively a group may score high during an assessment designed to measure conceptual understanding but at an individual level “free riders” within that group may not understand the intended concept. This is problematic as this may produce a “sucker effect” where other group members respond to “free riding” by also becoming “free riders” themselves. Here, group work in HE may actually inhibit individual student conceptual development, which would require course tutors to carefully manage, design, and assess groups effectively.

Overall, from a cognitive perspective of learning, there is a literature that suggests working collaboratively may facilitate quality “individual” learning, which involves conceptual understanding. However, these groups tend to be organized by course tutors, have a distinct function on completing a specified learning task and disband once this is achieved. In light of this, it remains to be seen whether or not learning can occur in other forms of groups between students? One such social group that is ubiquitous throughout the HE sector are friendship groups.

THE IMPORTANCE OF FRIENDSHIP GROUPS IN LEARNING

Early work has shown that friendship groups play an influential and significant role in the student life cycle ( Spady, 1970 ). Students have been shown to use such social activity to develop cooperative learning strategies across a range of different classroom settings and while not all lead to equally effective strategies in learning most if not all such strategies are related to the development of a portfolio of transferable skills such as self esteem or the ability to work well with others ( Slavin, 1988 ). This social skillset has been shown to play an effective mechanism in the facilitation of learning across a diverse student population ( Hurtado et al., 2003 ). Interestingly there is an emerging body of evidence suggesting that the development of such learning strategies is also predicated by engaging within a friendship group on various social media platforms ( Dabbagh and Kitsantas, 2012 ; Wang et al., 2012 ) which suggests that designers of distance learning provision should consider opportunities for students to engage with such activities as part of the online learning experience.

Within an HE setting and during the course of a campus based degree program students are likely to form and develop many diverse friendships with their peers on both their course and in the wider student community. According to Hartup and Stevens (1997 , p. 355):

“Friendship consists mainly of being attracted to someone who is attracted in return, with parity governing the social exchanges between the individuals involved. Friendships carry expectations that “best” friends will spend more time with one another than other persons, offering one another emotional support, including loyalty, trust, intimacy, and fun. ”

In light of the above quote, friendship groups may develop between students based on some form of mutual attraction, for example interests and even political values. Students may also form friendships with other students on their course for a variety of reasons including an interest in the discipline they are studying. Given the almost universal and pervasive nature of the friendship group within the student population it is incumbent on us to examine its utility, if any, as a potential learning device. The research literature with young children does suggest friendship groups positively impact on cognitive, emotional, and social development ( Hartup, 1989 ) and aid psychological and affective adjustment to formal educational environments ( Berndt, 1999 ). However, Antonio (2001) argues despite the growing literature on peer-to-peer interactions in HE, their still remains a need for research on the role of friendship groups within universities. The large-scale survey study conducted by the author above ( n = 677) suggested that racially diverse student friendship groups were related to high levels of cultural awareness, racial understanding, and interracial interactions. Whilst this demonstrates the role between friendship groups and human relations, there still remains a lack of evidence on student learning. Nonetheless, Roberts (2009) conducted an ethnographic study of an undergraduate nursing program and found that friendship groups were used by students as a support mechanism where they could “ask anything” to develop their own understanding. This finding suggests that students who were categorized as friends were seen as a valuable source of knowledge, which was not subject to a hierarchical structure based on seniority or time served on the educational program. On the other hand, Antonio (2004) found students tended to use friends on their program of study as a “referral” point to judge their own academic competency. That is to say, friendship groups may be used by individual students as a mechanism to regulate their “academic self concept,” which refers to a student’s perceived academic ability ( Rodriguez, 2009 ).

This process of social comparison may therefore impact on how students interact with their peers and their motivation to learn, which is associated with understanding of concepts ( Entwistle and Waterston, 1988 ; Kahu, 2013 ; Mega et al., 2014 ). In this light, existing friendship groups between students do indeed impact on students learning. However, as noted above, while such groups are effective in ensuring that students do develop an “academic self concept” they are limited insofar as they suffer from the same constraints as the more formal tutor developed work groups, e.g., they tend to be defined for a specific purpose and will cease to function after their objectives have been met. However, while work has started to show that spontaneous friendship groups do indeed play an important role in the development of work based learning ( Carr and Gidman, 2012 ) their efficacy within the HE sector and student learning has yet to be examined. The current research was therefore conducted as an exploratory study investigating the extent to which existing friendships between students may impact learning. These data would therefore provide an insight in whether learning in groups (such as friendships) can exist when the function of the group is not explicitly centered on completing a learning task and what this involves.

METHODOLOGY

Two focus groups each lasting approximately one hour were conducted with seven first year students (for each focus group participants were split into a group of three or four, age range 18–20 years, five females and two males) enrolled on a Human Psychology degree at a UK higher education institution. Participants were randomly selected from a cohort of approximately 150 students. All procedures were approved by the local institutional ethics review board and all of the participants provided written informed consent prior to taking part in the focus groups. The sample size was deemed appropriate for the current study as it is consistent with the critical realist assumptions that underpin this study (see Parker, 1992 ) and with existing work in the field (e.g., Sims-Schouten et al., 2007 ; Easton, 2010 ).

The focus group schedule aimed to gather data on the students’ perceptions and experiences of learning. As the role of the researcher is one of a “moderator” or “facilitator” ( Kidd and Parshall, 2000 ), there were three broad topics that were raised for group discussion: (1) What does a typical day at university involve? (2) What do you normally do outside of lectures and seminars? (3) What does learning mean to you and how do you know when you have learned something? In line with the principles of qualitative methods in psychological research it was important to use probing questions rather than specific leading questions on the role of friendship groups, as these may have shaped the responses of the participants in a socially desirable manner (see Willig, 2013 ). By using probing topics, this allowed the participants to draw upon their own lived experiences and discuss what was important and relevant to them (see Banister et al., 2011 ). Nonetheless, to ensure the focus groups addressed the role between student social interactions and learning, there were a series of prompts (i.e., What do you talk about with other students from university? Do you meet other students outside of university? What do you do together?) to direct the discussion.

Each focus group was conducted by one of the authors who had not taught the students or had any contact with the students prior to data collection, therefore minimizing social desirability artifacts. Data collection commenced during the final semester of the academic year, providing students with the opportunity to discuss the range of teaching methods, assessment, feedback, learning environments, and strategies experienced during the course of their studies.

The focus group data were transcribed by a research assistant and analyzed by the authors from a critical realist perspective. The key principles of critical realism are the existence of a real world which is multi-layered (ontology) produced by underlying causal mechanisms (epistemology; Bhaskar, 1975 , 1979 ; Pawson, 1989 ). That is to say, mechanisms produce phenomena, which can then be experienced. Given this, as underlying mechanisms are unobservable due to the multi-stratified nature of reality, they can be inferred by exploring the similarities and differences in how people construct and add meaning to their experience of phenomena ( Downward and Mearman, 2007 ). In this case, it is the experience of learning in groups during a first year Human Psychology undergraduate degree program. Despite this, the causal efficiency of a mechanism is regulated by a context ( Lawson, 1997 ). Whilst mechanisms have the causal potential to produce phenomena; this may not be actualized within and across contexts. Within any educational context (e.g., lecture, seminar etc) there are likely to be a range of causal mechanisms that co-exist. This refers to an “open system” as the causal efficacy of a mechanism may be inhibited or actualized by other mechanisms within that context ( Pawson, 1989 ; Sayer, 2000 ). In this light, research from a critical realist perspective becomes the process of inferring the causal mechanism(s) that may have produced the phenomenon under investigation and the contextual conditions in which these structures were realized. The emphasis is on the process of “inferring” mechanisms as these underlying causal structures are assumed to be unobservable; therefore they cannot be directly identified. As Sims-Schouten et al. (2007 , p. 105) argue:

“ This means our attempts to identify and understand deep structures will remain just that – attempts. However, acknowledging that our knowledge of reality will always be limited is not the same as saying that there is no such thing as reality .” [our bold]

However, evidence collected during an empirical investigation on participants’ experience of phenomena will draw upon the activity of mechanism(s), therefore aiding a researcher to make informed inferences and interpretations of causal mechanism(s). This process of inferring mechanisms is referred to as retroduction, which involves moving beyond description to underlying meaning ( Pawson, 1989 ). In this light, inferred mechanism(s) borne from research data are more likely to be valid (i.e., correspond to actual mechanism∖s) than those developed from anecdotal or lay perspectives (see Benton and Craib, 2001 ; Carter and New, 2004 ). Whilst this research was exploratory, the aim was to examine the extent to which learning in friendship groups (proposed mechanism) may have facilitated student understanding (phenomena) during a first year Human Psychology degree (context). This was achieved by employing a “case by case” critical realist analytical approach. The qualitative data coding involved the process of observing variation within and between responses to develop themes. In this light, themes were used to identify similarities and differences in how the students constructed their experience of learning in friendship groups (both in and outside formal learning environments – lectures). From these data, within the context of this exploratory study we address the extent to which learning in friendship groups might be a mechanism for student learning from a psychological perspective. To ensure quality, the themes presented in the analysis were scrutinized by an independent expert in relation to richness and interpretation of data, depth of analysis and overall coherence ( Parker, 1992 ; Elliott et al., 1999 ).

ANALYSIS AND DISCUSSION

The first theme to emerge from the data was individual versus group learning. All the participants constructed learning as a cognitive outcome, which was best achieved through individualistic strategies to learn. Learning in the context of a group or with others was constructed as problematic because it prevented students from retaining facts. This is suggested in three extracts below:

“ I learn best on my own, I do the same as you (refers to a participant) I just summarize what was said in a lecture and read over it and over it till it sticks .”

“ I think 1 All names reported throughout are pseudonyms.most of the time I study alone just because I prefer it like that, I think I would get less done in a group as discussion may stop me concentrating on learning the facts. ”

“ Personally I work best alone because I make a list of what I need to look at and tick it off one by one, make my notes and learn it, like I work best like that than trying to do it with other people, because then they can waste your time, like it’s not a waste obviously you are helping someone but you can give up a lot of your time to teach someone something you already know.. .”

These data suggest that learning was conceived as an individualistic cognitive outcome. Moreover, for Janet in the first extract, learning was constructed as the memorization of teaching materials, so successful learning involved accurate recall of information. Consequently, as evidenced in the extract by Dave, groups are conceived as problematic as social interaction may prevent students from retaining facts and hence learning. These data therefore suggest that psychology, as a discipline, is perceived by the students in the focus groups as dealing with concrete “facts” rather than concepts that are subject to debate. In the extract by Zara, learning is constructed as the transmission of information or facts. Overall, this suggests that learning was construed primarily as an individualistic process and outcome to which group work does not provide a facilitative context for this. This conceptualization of learning is largely problematic and challenges the perspective of some higher education practitioners who argue that learning is concerned with change and transformation rather than imparting “facts” or “truths” to passive students (see Prilleltensky and Nelson, 2002 ).

The second theme to emerge from the focus group data was collaborative learning through friendship groups. All the participants discussed the ways in which they interacted with other students on their course who they categorized as friends. These interactions suggested that learning was a social process as friendships provided contexts for participants to regulate how they learned, what they learned and to judge their success as a learner. The three extracts below illustrate the range of interactions participants had with their friends on the course.

“...with my friends that are on my psychology course, I might have a discussion about...umm... whether we understand the stuff given from the lecture, we can then go through it together and have a discussion about it. Like I didn’t really get that lecture, my friend will go yeah I didn’t get it either. We have discussions and arguments about what has been said in lectures. ”

“ With my friends I talk about...um... lectures and then what we didn’t understand and then we’d like each read up a section and then try and explain it to one another and like we did that with one of our lectures and revising and stuff. I think that helps then because you know hearing from your friend is easier than hearing from someone you don’t know. ”

“ Within the exam period I talk with my friends quite a lot actually, like how much revision have you done? Or I might say oh I’ve done some today, yesterday and vice versa especially in exam period time then you talk more about exams. Coursework is exactly the same, well with me like, the coursework date is coming up soon, so I will say what you done and vice versa...um... you kind of go through it with each other and check .”

The above extract by Sarah suggests that interactions with friends were utilized as “reference” points during assessments to regulate learning. In this context, learning was positioned as a quantifiable measure, which could be used to judge how successful a student was by the amount of time they engaged with a task (e.g., revision and coursework). This extract suggests that interactions between friends provide a benchmark or measure to regulate how much time students spend on a learning task. In the extracts by Louise and Colin there is the suggestion that learning is centered on understanding concepts where social interactions between friends are utilized as contexts to facilitate this process. For both these participants, when they had problems understanding concepts from lecture material, their friendships became a resource to help develop their understanding. As evidenced in the extract by Colin, this strategy involved interaction and discussion between friends as they were seen as non-judgmental. Nonetheless, the form of interaction discussed in this extract between friends supports the earlier theme on individual vs. group learning. That is, learning through social interaction involved the transmission of information as a purely individualistic process and outcome. Interestingly, none of the participants explicitly discussed (nor when prompted by the interviewer) the interactions with their friends on their course (like those identified above) as learning experiences. Despite this, as suggested in these data, friendships may be an important aspect for learning during the first year of a degree program. In the extract below, Janet discusses how friendships between herself and other students on her course were developed.

“ All my friends on the course live at home like me but If I have just met someone doing psychology and they are telling me something, I don’t think I would listen but now I have been at unit for a long time and...umm... trust develops, so you become friends and then you can see how you can help each other and err, like helping with references. I wasn’t good with referencing then my friend helped me and like he wasn’t good at spelling and my other friend wasn’t good at setting out paragraphs so were just helping each other out. ”

The extract above suggests friendships were formed based on some commonality between students, in this case where they lived during term time. Despite this, for Janet, trust was critical to developing her friendships with other students and was achieved through regular interactions. Likewise, without trust Janet felt unable to accept the perspectives of other students. Friends therefore provide a support network to facilitate academic development at an individual level. Whilst only one participant discussed the formation of friendships with other students on their course, the extract does suggest that these groups are not developed for the purpose of learning but they provide a context for learning to occur once they are formed. Five of the participants also discussed how existing friendships in the wider student community (that is, outside of their course) were used to develop their conceptual understanding. This is suggested in the two extracts below:

“...there are a lot of guys in my friendship group like you know... umm... when they are sat playing call of duty (video game) or something I am like this is going to make you, you know have more aggression due to the media and stuff just kind of like you know like chucking topics out there like or like we, I don’t know about you guys (refers to other participants), we did a lecture about nature versus nurture and media aggression and stuff like that it’s interesting to chat about with your friends really if it’s relevant to the modern day because friends not on my course will not know what I am on about but if you make it relevant to now then I can get a good discussion with my friends and see what they think and see if they are right .”

“ A couple of my friends were looking at a magazine and at the cover and images and things and I was saying like oh yeah about this and this, anorexia nervosa and this and they were like discussing with me. It was good to come up in conversation because I did this on my course and they were all listening and then talking about it. Also I have a friend who does optometry as well and she was talking about the vision in children and things and I joined in the conversation and she was like what are you doing this? I was like yep, yep I am learning this. It’s quite amusing really; it is good we got discussing it and I was getting a different view and starting to see what it all means .”

The two extracts above both suggest interactions between friends facilitated conceptual understanding through the discussion and application of disciplinary concepts. In the first extract, Suzy applies theories of aggression (which were discussed in a lecture) to her friends’ “warfare” arcade game. This provides a learning experience, which enables Suzy through discussion with her friends to further her understanding of theoretical concepts by applying them to contemporary “real life” situations. The quality of this interaction therefore allowed her to add meaning and judge the validity of the theories involving aggression. In the second extract, Zara discusses two learning experiences with friends at University. The first involved discussion of eating disorders, whilst the second involved the visual perception of children. Interestingly, Zara makes reference to the fact that interacting with her friend who studied optometry provided a context in which she was given an insight into theories of vision from a different perspective (see e.g., Antonio, 2004 ). This experience provided scope for Zara to start to develop an interdisciplinary understanding of the concept of vision. However, integrating different disciplinary perspectives may not be valued across degree programs and may even have a negative relationship with student attainment. Nonetheless, these data are indicative of a deep approach to learning, characterized by an orientation to “understand” and extract “meaning” from a learning task ( Entwistle, 2001 ). This finding therefore contrasts with the first theme, which suggested the participants tended to conceptualize learning in terms of memorization, which was often characterized as “retaining the facts.” These data therefore support the earlier argument that students did not view interactions with their friends as valid learning experiences, since learning was conceived in terms of retention and recall. This interpretation, however, remains tentative given the lack of data on how students explicitly discussed their conceptions of learning in relation to friendship groups. Despite this, the above extracts support the earlier argument that friendship groups were not formed based on the desire to achieve a learning objective but provided a context in which student understanding could be developed. However, these students did not necessarily demonstrate awareness that these interactions had a group function – conceptual development.

These data therefore provide evidence that existing friendships between students on a course and in the wider student community (“outside of the classroom”) were a resource in which the participants developed their understanding of theoretical concepts through discussion, explanation, and application to “real life” contexts. In the context of the current study, friendships may therefore have been an active mechanism facilitating student conceptual understanding. This process of collaborative learning is best understood as an “implicit community,” which refers to individuals achieving a task (in this context learning characterized as conceptual development) through social interaction but demonstrating no self-awareness. That is, people may feel that they are not part of a community or group but still achieve tasks by working collaboratively. This adds to the literature on groups (see Antonio, 2001 , 2004 ; Baron and Kerr, 2003 ) by suggesting that groups may form and function through social interaction but membership may not be a conscious decision. Interestingly, all seven participants conceived learning as knowledge acquisition which involved retention and recall of course material. Furthermore, learning was perceived as “competitive” involving individualistic cognitive processes (retention strategies). Group work was therefore constructed as a problematic endeavor, as it prevented students from engaging in strategies to memorize facts (learn). This suggests the participants may not have seen the interactions they engaged with friends as valid learning experiences; we do, however, present this as a tentative interpretation of the findings given the lack of data directly addressing how students understood the relationship between friendship groups and learning.

The implications of the current research go beyond understanding the dynamics of student focused friendship groups as effective drivers of learning. The findings of the current study suggest that students may interact within such groups but not be immediately aware of the beneficial effect that such activity is having on their subsequent learning of various concepts. Such a finding would inform the current movement on the development of campus real estate that is designed to facilitate such social endeavors ( Morrone and Workman, 2014 ). Initiatives such as the Primary Capital Program or the British Council for School Environments in the UK act as fora for innovation in the design of academic buildings for the tertiary education while initiatives such as the Learning Landscapes in Higher Education 1 is an example of the emerging role that Architects and Educationalists can share together in the HE sector. When considered together with the findings of the current study it is clear that the design of any campus estate needs to incorporate the opportunities for students to meet in a social and non-directed capacity.

It is also interesting to speculate that such a learning mechanism may be used to design effective distance delivery. Specifically, with the regards to the development of Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) which often consists of many thousands of students taking part simultaneously. With regards to the design of such programs there is much debate as to the various means to support various learning styles ( Grunewald et al., 2013 ) and program designers are now turning their attentions to various mechanisms that may engender and support a more community based style of learning ( Gillani et al., 2014 ).

The data revealed in the current paper suggest friendships were formed with other students due to some form of mutual attraction, which is consistent with the exiting literature ( Hartup and Stevens, 1997 ). It is important to note this mutual attraction may be centered on some aspect of learning (conceptions of, study strategies, etc.) but the friendship itself was not necessarily formed to specifically facilitate learning. Nonetheless, trust was seen as central to developing friendships and producing contexts where the social interactions between friends stimulated conceptual development at an individual student level. In this sense, collaborative learning was evident as students developed shared meanings and understandings through social interaction, which demonstrates learning at both an individual and social level (see Gillies, 2000 ). As the study was exploratory, involving two focus groups with a sample of seven first year psychology students, these findings are presented tentatively but they do raise a number of research questions that warrant further investigation adopting a longitudinal design: (1) how do friendships form and develop over the course of a degree program? (2) How do students understand and make sense of their friendships groups in higher education? (3) Are there differences between subject areas? (4) To what extent does the social interaction between friends relate to student conceptual development over the course of a degree? (5) To what extent does the interaction between friends relate to the development of disciplinary professional identities over the course of a degree?

Within the context of this study, the focus group data suggested friendship groups may have been a causal mechanism for developing student conceptual understanding. Moreover, whilst students tended to conceive learning as an outcome involving memorization and perceived working in study groups as problematic (as it may prevent students from engaging in strategies to retain information), existing friendship groups provided a context to implicitly further students understanding of theoretical concepts. These friendships were not formed specifically to address a learning objective, which is often assumed from a psychological perspective but developed from some form of mutual attraction between students. The focus group data suggested that these friendship groups provided a setting in which trust was developed between students. Interactions between friends therefore created opportunities for students to explain disciplinary concepts, apply to “real life” situations and gain different perspectives, which may have facilitated conceptual understanding at an individual level. Given the study was exploratory, the findings were presented tentatively but they do suggest the importance of existing groups (not formed for the purpose or shared aim of learning) in developing student understanding. Future research therefore needs to address how friendships form, develop, and are understood by students over the course of a degree program along with the extent to which they produce a deeper conceptual understanding.

Conflict of Interest Statement

The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.

1 See http://www.rm.com/_RMVirtual/Media/Downloads/RM_PCP_White_Paper. pdf or http://www.bcse.uk.net/ or http://learninglandscapes.blogs.lincoln.ac.uk/files /2010/04/FinalReport.pdf for further information regarding these initiatives.

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Why Gratitude May Be Your Brain's Best Friend

Practicing gratitude can positively impact your health, including helping you sleep better..

Imagine a simple, easy-to-access tool that could elevate your mood, improve your sleep, and strengthen your relationships. It's not a miracle pill or a high-tech device — it’s gratitude. Long extolled in proverbs and philosophical teachings, the age-old wisdom of being thankful now finds support in modern scientific studies, showing meaningful mental and physical health benefits. 

Gratitude on the Brain

At its core, gratitude involves recognizing and appreciating the positive aspects of life, both big and small. Pausing to experience this feeling not only improves our mood but also triggers noticeable changes in brain activity.

Brain scans have shown that expressing gratitude activates the prefrontal cortex , a crucial area responsible for decision-making and emotional regulation. This neurological activation prompts the release of dopamine, the 'feel-good' neurotransmitter , enhancing mood, increasing motivation, and sharpening attention.

Over time, a consistent gratitude practice goes beyond ephemeral emotions — it fosters lasting changes in the brain . By engaging regularly in gratitude practices, like journaling, mindful reflection, and expressing thanks, we modify our neural pathways, transforming a simple act of thankfulness into a sustainable habit. This habit enhances our mental resilience and facilitates a more optimistic outlook with ease, establishing a solid foundation for emotional stability. 

Read More: Try These 6 Science-Backed Secrets to Happiness

The Mental Health Benefits of Gratitude

Adopting a grateful mindset can subtly but meaningfully improve our mental health and outlook on life. This positive shift enhances our daily experiences and has been shown to help alleviate symptoms of depression and anxiety , thereby boosting our overall happiness and resilience.

Additionally, as our mental health improves, we may begin to develop beneficial traits such as generosity and empathy . This growth not only enriches our personal lives but also positively impacts our interactions with others.

Read More: How to Improve Your Mental Health

Physical Health Benefits

While gratitude is well-known for boosting mental wellness, its impact on physical health is promising, albeit less certain . Research indicates that gratitude interventions significantly improve subjective sleep quality , aligning with anecdotal reports that practices such as nightly journaling lead to better rest. 

However, the effects on other physical health aspects, such as blood pressure and blood sugar levels, although showing potential, are not consistently proven across studies. These preliminary findings suggest possible benefits, but the evidence remains inconclusive due to the limited number of studies and their varied methodologies.

Effects on additional health markers like inflammation and self-reported physical symptoms present a mixed picture, further complicating our understanding. This inconsistency underscores the need for more comprehensive research to firmly establish gratitude's role in physical health. Such studies will help clarify whether gratitude practices can be effectively integrated into clinical practices as part of a holistic approach to health that benefits both body and mind. 

Read More: The Mental and Physical Benefits of Getting Outdoors

Personal and Professional Relationships

The ripple effects of gratitude begin within and then cascade into our interpersonal relationships. By encouraging us to recognize and value the positive contributions of others, gratitude deepens our social connections . This strengthening of personal ties not only enriches our close relationships but also sets the foundation for broader social impacts affecting larger groups and communities.

In workplaces and communities, gratitude improves dynamics, satisfaction, and productivity. It promotes acts of kindness and cooperation , fostering a more collaborative and supportive atmosphere. This is partly because gratitude activates brain areas associated with social bonding and ethical judgment.

"Feeling grateful has wellness potential in every setting. It is a type of positive thinking, which generally has better emotional effects on us than neutral or negative thinking," explains Dr. John Malouff , a psychology professor at the University of New England. "Wellness programs would be wise to promote thoughts of gratitude, as they can significantly enhance emotional and psychological resilience." 

Read More: Do Relationships Affect Our Physical Health?

How to Practice Gratitude Daily

Incorporating gratitude into your daily routine is simple and easy :

Keep a Gratitude Journal: Spend a few minutes each day noting what you’re thankful for, whether in a physical journal or in a note-taking app on your phone.

Mindful Reflection: Reflect on past experiences and the impact of key individuals in your life.

Express Gratitude to Others: Strengthen your relationships with simple thank-you notes, kind words, or thoughtful gestures.

"Too often, we focus on negatives or threats compared to what has gone well or what might go well," Malouff says. "Maintaining a balance of positive and negative thinking is crucial, and we should never take positive conditions and events for granted."

Gratitude is not about relentless cheerfulness or ignoring challenges ; it's about embracing a balanced perspective that appreciates the positives while realistically managing adversities.  

Read More: Contentment is the Most Underrated Key to Happiness

A Complementary Mental Health Practice

While gratitude practices can meaningfully improve your well-being, they are not a cure-all. Instead, these practices should complement, rather than replace, professional therapy or medical treatments.

By incorporating simple gratitude exercises into your daily routine, you may find profound transformations in your life, opening the door to personal growth, resilience, and joy.

Read More: Therapy on a Plate: How Your Diet Can Benefit Your Mental Health

Article Sources

Our writers at Discovermagazine.com use peer-reviewed studies and high-quality sources for our articles, and our editors review for scientific accuracy and editorial standards. Review the sources used below for this article:

Frontiers in psychology. Neural correlates of gratitude

Neuron . Dopamine in motivational control: rewarding, aversive, and alerting

International Journal of Applied Positive Psychology. The Effect of Expressed Gratitude Interventions on Psychological Wellbeing: A Meta-Analysis of Randomised Controlled Studies

Psychological Bulletin . Does gratitude enhance prosociality?: A meta-analytic review

Journal of Psychosomatic Research . A systematic review of gratitude interventions: Effects on physical health and health behaviors

Psychology Today. How Gratitude Helps You Sleep at Night

Social and Personality Psychology Compass . Find, Remind, and Bind: The Functions of Gratitude in Everyday Relationships

Psychology professor at the University of New England. Dr. John Malouff

Psychological Science . Gratitude and Prosocial Behavior: Helping When It Costs You

Psychology Today. Gratitude

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Greater Good Science Center • Magazine • In Action • In Education

How to Make the Lasting Friendships You Want

When I was a young adult, I loved the song “Did I Happen to Mention” by Julia Fordham. In the song, Fordham laments the potential loss of her lover and sings, “I need another good friend like I need…a hole in my head”—a sentiment I probably agreed with at the time. After all, I had lots of great friends. But compared to a romantic partner, they seemed less important somehow.


That kind of thinking may be common, but it’s very wrong-headed, writes psychologist Marisa Franco in her new book, Platonic: How the Science of Attachment Can Help You Make—and Keep—Friends . Our friends are important to our happiness and well-being, she argues, and they often fulfill us even more than other relationships can.

“We choose our friends, which allows us to surround ourselves with people who root for us, get us, and delight in our joy,” she writes. “Through friendship, we can self-select into some of the most affirming, safe, and sacred relationships of our lives.” The benefits of having close friends in our lives are multiple, says Franco. They make us feel whole, increase our ability to be empathic, and help us to figure out who we are. Friendships are important for healthy aging , too. And they benefit society as a whole, as friendships increase trust and cross-group friendships can decrease prejudice .

Yet some of us make friends more easily than others, depending partly on our “attachment style”—how secure or insecure we’ve learned to feel in relationships. If we assume we are worthy of love and trust friends to provide it (a secure attachment style), it’s likely we’ll have many warm, supportive friendships. But, if we fear abandonment from others, we may act clingingly (anxious attachment style) or act as if we don’t care and withdraw from others (avoidant attachment style). Franco helps people identify their own attachment style (or that of their friends) and gives wise advice for how to prevent an insecure attachment style from torpedoing promising relationships.

If you’re unsure how to make friends or deepen intimacy, Franco has lots of tips for you that can help. 

Take the initiative

It’s obvious that you won’t make friends if no one takes the initiative to connect. But it can seem daunting to do that, especially if you assume friendships need to happen organically, without effort (an attitude likely to stymie friendship) or people won’t like you if they get to know you (a fear that is likely overblown ).

Friendship takes effort, but it can happen in a number of ways. Franco suggests that if you’re more introverted, reconnecting with an old friend you haven’t seen in a while may work well. Or, if you’re more extroverted, you can pay attention when you experience moments of connection with new acquaintances and take a step toward building friendship—maybe asking if they’d like to get coffee sometime.

“We have to put ourselves out there and try. It’s a process of reaching out over and over again,” writes Franco.

To that end, it can be good to join groups or classes that meet more than once, so that you have multiple opportunities to take the initiative. Anticipating more regular contact with someone can be important for building friendships, too.

Increase your willingness to be vulnerable

This is an important part of friendship that too many people ignore. We feel closer to people when we are vulnerable with them, sharing our fears, insecurities, or regrets. And we can grow in intimacy by responding well when others divulge their own foibles to us.

“Understanding and feeling attuned to others’ vulnerability is a key to developing and deepening friendships—and missing those cues can jeopardize them,” says Franco.

People may be fearful that others will judge them if they share things they feel ashamed of. But research suggests the opposite —you endear yourself to others when you share intimacies with them, as long as you don’t overshare or use vulnerability to manipulate someone. This may help explain why the famous “Fast Friends” exercise, where two strangers ask and answer 36 increasingly personal questions , works so well .

One warning, though, says Franco: If you are vulnerable with someone who is avoidant, they may not react as well as you’d like. “Since they are more uncomfortable with emotion, when others are vulnerable, the intimacy, trust, and love inherent to the interaction may be eclipsed by their discomfort with feelings.”

Let people see your authentic self

Being your own authentic self, writes Franco, is when “we aren’t triggered, when we can make intentional, rather than reactive, decisions about how we want to show up in the world.” In other words, it’s not about “telling it like it is” or being brutally honest even if it means putting others down. It’s feeling safe enough to access our higher self and being congruent with our values.

For achieving more authenticity with others, Franco suggests practicing mindfulness, which helps you to access and accept your moment-to-moment experiences. In this way, you can know your inner self better and be less prone to acting defensively when you feel uncomfortable, and more resilient if someone rejects you.

However, while being authentic can build friendships, it may be difficult to be yourself when faced with prejudice. “In a perfect world, we would all be loved in our most authentic form, but in the real world, privilege plays into whose authentic self is welcomed and whose is rejected,” writes Franco. It’s important to “decouple rejection from self-condemnation” and, when necessary, to vet people before bringing your whole self to the relationship.

Be productive with your anger, when it’s needed

All close relationships can involve conflicts or hurts that need repair . So, it’s important to use anger wisely in these situations. Franco recommends letting a friend know when you’re upset with them and why, but with a focus on preserving the relationship (anger born of hope) rather than lashing out with blame or punishment (anger born of despair).

“Anger of despair is the destructive force we typically associate with anger. Anger of hope, however, is a healing force that can deepen friendships, one that we should embrace,” she writes.

That means not letting things fester, but expressing upsets by saying how much you value the friendship, using “I” statements, and admitting fault for your role in creating the conflict. Friends who work through conflict are closer because of it and have more satisfying relationships.

Act with generosity

Generosity can be the social glue that ties people together, and the same goes for friendship. People who are kind and generous are more likely to have many friends and have greater well-being.

Franco recommends performing acts of kindness to cement friendships—like sending a hand-written card, baking a treat, offering to pick up someone from the airport, or letting someone borrow a jacket. Just be sure that you aren’t sacrificing yourself by offering too much generosity to too many people. Otherwise, you may burn out—or cause your relationships to suffer .

Giving with an agenda—to make someone love you, for example—or having generosity only go in one direction probably won’t result in friendship. In those cases, it may be best to cut ties or set your expectations lower for that friendship.

On the other hand, Franco says, you do need to show up when a good friend is in crisis—even when it’s a sacrifice.

“For friendship to flourish, we need to know if we call a friend crying because we got fired from our job at the nuclear power plant, they won’t text back, ‘I am currently unavailable,’” she writes.

Show affection

As James Taylor once sang, “Shower the people you love with love. Show them the way that you feel.” That includes your friends. Showing affection is a sure way to make someone feel valued.

Yet some people may fear expressing affection for a friend, worrying that it will be unwanted or misconstrued. This may be especially true for men in cultures where homophobia is rampant or where men are raised not to feel their feelings for other men—or even women.

Still, research shows that outward expressions of caring are an important ingredient in friendship for everyone. You may need to tailor your affection to your friend’s tolerance for closeness—physical or emotional. But people like people who like them, and showing affection communicates that you like someone—while withholding it can be a relationship killer.

“The more you show affection, the more likely you are to not just make friends, but also deepen the friendships you already have,” writes Franco.

All in all, Franco’s central message is that we have the power to strengthen friendships, if only we invest in them. And it’s worth it, because when we value our friendships, we can transform our lives for the better.

“Don’t wait for a calamity to rock you into realizing friendship is priceless,” she writes. “Engrave friendship on your list. Make being a good friend a part of who you are, because a deep and true core that needs to belong lies within us all.”

About the Author

Jill Suttie

Jill Suttie, Psy.D. , is Greater Good ’s former book review editor and now serves as a staff writer and contributing editor for the magazine. She received her doctorate of psychology from the University of San Francisco in 1998 and was a psychologist in private practice before coming to Greater Good .

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Through the Lens of a Critical Friend

Critical Friends

The critical friends process, critical friends in many settings.

• be clear about the nature of the relationship, and not use it for evaluation or judgment;
• listen well: clarifying ideas, encouraging specificity, and taking time to fully understand what is being presented;
• offer value judgments only upon request from the learner;
• respond to the learner's work with integrity; and
• be an advocate for the success of the work.
• The learner describes a practice and requests feedback. For example, a teacher might describe a new problem-solving technique, or a student might describe a project being considered.
• The critical friend asks questions in order to understand the practice described and to clarify the context in which the practice takes place. For example, the friend may ask the learner, “How much time did you allow for the students to do problem solving?” or “What do you hope other people will learn from your project?”
• The learner sets desired outcomes for this conference. This allows the learner to be in control of the feedback.
• The critical friend provides feedback about what seems significant about the practice. This feedback provides more than cursory praise; it provides a lens that helps to elevate the work. For example, the teacher's critical friend might say, “I think it's significant that you're asking students to do problem solving because it will help them become more self-directed.” The student's critical friend might say, “I think your project will be significant because you are trying to bring a new insight into the way people have understood the changing role of women in the United States.“
• The critical friend raises questions and critiques the work, nudging the learner to see the project from different perspectives. Typical queries might be, “What does the evidence from your students' work indicate to you about their capacity to do problem solving?” or “When you do this project, how will you help others follow your presentation?” One 2nd grade student said to his partner, “You might want to glue the objects. It needs to be neater.”
• Both participants reflect and write. The learner writes notes on the conference—an opportunity to think about points and suggestions raised. For example, the learner may reflect on questions such as, Will changes make this work better or worse? What have I learned from this refocusing process? The critical friend writes to the learner with suggestions or advice that seem appropriate to the desired outcome. This part of the process is different from typical feedback situations in that the learner does not have to respond or make any decisions on the basis of the feedback. Instead, the learner reflects on the feedback without needing to defend the work to the critic.

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Senge, P. (1990). The Fifth Discipline: The Art and Practice of the Learning Organization . New York: Doubleday.

Arthur L. Costa is emeritus professor of education at California State University, Sacramento, and cofounder/codirector of the Institute for Habits of Mind. He has devoted his career to improving education through more "thought-full" instruction and assessment.

Costa has served as a classroom teacher, a curriculum consultant, an assistant superintendent for instruction, and the director of educational programs for the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. He is recipient of the Malcolm Knowles Award for Self-Directed Learning from the International Society for Self-Directed Learning. He has made presentations and conducted workshops in all 50 states and internationally.

Bena Kallick is the cofounder/codirector of the Institute for Habits of Mind and cofounder for Eduplanet21. Her areas of focus include group dynamics, creative and critical thinking, personalized learning, and alternative assessment strategies in the classroom.

Kallick also created a children's museum based on problem solving and invention. She taught at Yale University School of Organization and Management, University of Massachusetts Center for Creative and Critical Thinking, and Union Graduate School. She served on the board of Jobs for the Future and was a cofounder of Performance Pathways. She provides consulting services for school districts, state departments of education, professional organizations, and public agencies internationally.

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Friendships: Enrich your life and improve your health

Discover the connection between health and friendship, and how to promote and maintain healthy friendships.

Friendships can have a major impact on your health and well-being, but it's not always easy to develop or maintain friendships. Understand the importance of social connection in your life and what you can do to develop and nurture lasting friendships.

What are the benefits of friendships?

Good friends are good for your health. Friends can help you celebrate good times and provide support during bad times. Friends prevent isolation and loneliness and give you a chance to offer needed companionship, too. Friends can also:

• Increase your sense of belonging and purpose
• Boost your happiness and reduce your stress
• Improve your self-confidence and self-worth
• Help you cope with traumas, such as divorce, serious illness, job loss or the death of a loved one
• Encourage you to change or avoid unhealthy lifestyle habits, such as excessive drinking or lack of exercise

Friends also play a significant role in promoting your overall health. Adults with strong social connections have a reduced risk of many significant health problems, including depression, high blood pressure and an unhealthy body mass index (BMI). In fact, studies have found that older adults who have meaningful relationships and social support are likely to live longer than their peers with fewer connections.

Why is it sometimes hard to make friends or maintain friendships?

Many adults find it hard to develop new friendships or keep up existing friendships. Friendships may take a back seat to other priorities, such as work or caring for children or aging parents. You and your friends may have grown apart due to changes in your lives or interests. Or maybe you've moved to a new community and haven't yet found a way to meet people.

Developing and maintaining good friendships takes effort. The enjoyment and comfort friendship can provide, however, makes the investment worthwhile.

What's a healthy number of friends?

Quality counts more than quantity. While it may be good to cultivate a diverse network of friends and acquaintances, you may feel a greater sense of belonging and well-being by nurturing close, meaningful relationships that will support you through thick and thin.

What are some ways to meet new friends?

It's possible to develop friendships with people who are already in your social network. Think through people you've interacted with — even very casually — who made a positive impression.

You may make new friends and nurture existing relationships by:

• Staying in touch with people with whom you've worked or taken classes
• Reconnecting with old friends
• Reaching out to people you've enjoyed chatting with at social gatherings
• Introducing yourself to neighbors
• Making time to connect with family members

If anyone stands out in your memory as someone you'd like to know better, reach out. Ask mutual friends or acquaintances to share the person's contact information, or — even better — to reintroduce the two of you with a text, email or in-person visit. Extend an invitation to coffee or lunch.

To meet new people who might become your friends, you have to go to places where others are gathered. Don't limit yourself to one strategy for meeting people. The broader your efforts, the greater your likelihood of success.

Persistence also matters. Take the initiative rather than waiting for invitations to come your way and keep trying. You may need to suggest plans a few times before you can tell if your interest in a new friend is mutual.

For example, try several of these ideas:

• Attend community events. Look for groups or clubs that gather around an interest or hobby you share. You may find these groups online, or they may be listed in the newspaper or on community bulletin boards. There are also many websites that help you connect with new friends in your neighborhood or city. Do a Google search using terms such as [your city] + social network, or [your neighborhood] + meet ups.
• Volunteer. Offer your time or talents at a hospital, place of worship, museum, community center, charitable group or other organization. You can form strong connections when you work with people who have mutual interests.
• Extend and accept invitations. Invite a friend to join you for coffee or lunch. When you're invited to a social gathering, say yes. Contact someone who recently invited you to an activity and return the favor.
• Take up a new interest. Take a college or community education course to meet people who have similar interests. Join a class at a local gym, senior center or community fitness facility.
• Join a faith community. Take advantage of special activities and get-to-know-you events for new members.
• Take a walk. Grab your kids or pet and head outside. Chat with neighbors who are also out and about or head to a popular park and strike up conversations there.

Above all, stay positive. You may not become friends with everyone you meet but maintaining a friendly attitude and demeanor can help you improve the relationships in your life. It may also sow the seeds of friendship with new acquaintances.

How does social media affect friendships?

Joining a chat group or online community might help you make or maintain connections and relieve loneliness. However, research suggests that use of social networking sites doesn't necessarily translate to a larger offline network or closer offline relationships with network members. In addition, remember to exercise caution when sharing personal information or arranging an activity with someone you've only met online.

How can I nurture my friendships?

Developing and maintaining healthy friendships involves give-and-take. Sometimes you're the one giving support, and other times you're on the receiving end. Letting friends know you care about them and appreciate them can help strengthen your bond. It's as important for you to be a good friend as it is to surround yourself with good friends.

To nurture your friendships:

• Be kind. This most-basic behavior remains the core of successful relationships. Think of friendship as an emotional bank account. Every act of kindness and every expression of gratitude are deposits into this account, while criticism and negativity draw down the account.
• Be a good listener. Ask what's going on in your friends' lives. Let the other person know you are paying close attention through eye contact, body language and occasional brief comments such as, "That sounds fun." When friends share details of hard times or difficult experiences, be empathetic, but don't give advice unless your friends ask for it.
• Open up. Build intimacy with your friends by opening up about yourself. Being willing to disclose personal experiences and concerns shows that your friend holds a special place in your life, and it may deepen your connection.
• Show that you can be trusted. Being responsible, reliable and dependable is key to forming strong friendships. Keep your engagements and arrive on time. Follow through on commitments you've made to your friends. When your friends share confidential information, keep it private.
• Make yourself available. Building a close friendship takes time — together. Make an effort to see new friends regularly, and to check in with them in between meet ups. You may feel awkward the first few times you talk on the phone or get together, but this feeling is likely to pass as you get more comfortable with each other.

Manage your nerves with mindfulness. You may find yourself imagining the worst of social situations, and you may feel tempted to stay home. Use mindfulness exercises to reshape your thinking. Each time you imagine the worst, pay attention to how often the embarrassing situations you're afraid of actually take place. You may notice that the scenarios you fear usually don't happen.

When embarrassing situations do happen, remind yourself that your feelings will pass, and you can handle them until they do.

Yoga and other mind-body relaxation practices also may reduce anxiety and help you face situations that make you feel nervous.

Remember, it's never too late to develop new friendships or reconnect with old friends. Investing time in making friends and strengthening your friendships can pay off in better health and a brighter outlook for years to come.

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• Holt-Lunstad J. Loneliness and social isolation as risk factors: The power of social connection in prevention. American Journal of Lifestyle Medicine. 2021; doi: 10.1177/15598276211009454.
• Loneliness and social isolation — tips for staying connected. National Institute on Aging. https://www.nia.nih.gov/health/loneliness-and-social-isolation-tips-staying-connected. Accessed Dec. 16, 2021.
• Bystritsky A. Complementary and alternative treatments for anxiety symptoms and disorders: Physical, cognitive, and spiritual interventions. https://www.uptodate.com/contents/search. Accessed Dec. 16, 2021.
• Oshio T, et al. Association between the use of social networking sites, perceived social support, and life satisfaction: Evidence from a population-based survey in Japan. PLoS One. 2020; doi: 10/1371/journal.pone.0244199.
• Wilkinson A, et al. Maintenance and development of social connection by people with long-term conditions: A qualitative study. International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health. 2019; doi:10.3390/ijerph16111875.
• Suragarn U, et al. Approaches to enhance social connection in older adults: An integrative review of literature. Aging and Health Research. 2021; doi: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ahr.2021.100029.
• Holt-Lunstad J. The major health implications of social connection. Current Directions in Psychological Science. 2021; doi: 10.1177/0963721421999630.
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Becoming and Sustaining Critical Friends (1998–Present)

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• Cheryl J. Craig 8 ,
• Gayle A. Curtis 9 ,
• Michaelann Kelley 10 ,
• P. Tim Martindell 11 &
• M. Michael Pérez 12  

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In this chapter, the long-range impact of formal professional development and engagement as critical friends are detailed. The theoretical foundations of the Critical Friends Group® concept are explained. Stories of learning to be critical friends are shared, evidence of Critical Friends Group® work in our practice is explored, and our Critical Friends Group® interactions, use of CFG® repertoires, and cultivation of reflective practices are illuminated. We end the chapter with thoughts on sustaining critical friendship in teacher/teacher educator collaborative groups.

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Cheryl J. Craig

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Mount St. Joseph University, Cincinnati, OH, USA

Michaelann Kelley

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Houston Independent School District, Houston, TX, USA

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Craig, C.J., Curtis, G.A., Kelley, M., Martindell, P.T., Pérez, M.M. (2020). Becoming and Sustaining Critical Friends (1998–Present). In: Knowledge Communities in Teacher Education . Palgrave Studies on Leadership and Learning in Teacher Education. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-54670-0_4

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6 Benefits of Friendship and Why It's So Important to Stay Close

Invest in your besties

Arlin Cuncic, MA, is the author of The Anxiety Workbook and founder of the website About Social Anxiety. She has a Master's degree in clinical psychology.

Verywell / Joshua Seong

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Friends Help You Cultivate Community

Frequently asked questions.

In an age where many of us feel lonelier and more disconnected than ever—despite being chronically online—it's never been more important to invest extra energy into our friendships. Platonic relationships are sometimes overlooked in our quest for romantic ones but friendship is just as important to our psychological wellbeing.

Friendships can enrich your life in countless ways. Good friends teach you about yourself and challenge you to be better. They encourage you to keep going when times get tough and celebrate your successes with you. They help you build community

But friends do a lot more than give you a shoulder to cry on; they also have a positive impact on your health. Some research even says friendships are as important to your well-being as eating right and exercising. Here's why:

Friends Are Good for Your Physical Health

It turns out that healthy relationships actually contribute to good physical health. Having a close circle of friends can decrease your risk of health problems like diabetes, heart attack, and stroke.

Having strong social ties can also decrease feelings of loneliness, which evidence shows can take a toll on your longevity. According to a 2010 review, people with strong relationships have half the risk of premature death from all causes.  

Social isolation and loneliness are linked to a variety of health issues such as high blood pressure, substance abuse, heart disease, and even cancer.

Friends Encourage Healthy Behaviors

One possible explanation for those health benefits is that friendships can help you make lifestyle changes that can have a direct impact on your well-being. For example, your friends can help you set and maintain goals to eat better and exercise more.   They can also watch out for you and give a heads-up when any unhealthy behaviors (like drinking too much ) get out of hand.

Additionally, people are more motivated and likely to stick to a weight loss or exercise program when they do it with a buddy. It's much easier to get out and stay active when you have a friend by your side.

That friend may also suggest activities that you would not have considered on your own—thus, pushing you outside your comfort zone to challenge your anxiety.

Friends Provide Emotional Support

If you find yourself going through a hard time, having a friend to help you through can make the transition easier.

Research also shows that happiness is contagious among friends. One study of high school students found that those who were depressed were twice as likely to recover if they had happy friends. Likewise, kids were half as likely to develop depression if their friends had a "healthy mood."

Friends Help Build Your Confidence

Everyone has self-doubts and insecurities every now and then. But having friends who support you plays a big role in building your self-esteem . When people around you provide validation, it impacts your ability to love and appreciate yourself.

Supportive friends can help you feel more confident by offering praise and reassurance when you're feeling unsure. They'll shine a light on just how amazing you are and how much you have to offer others.

Friends Help You Beat Stress

Everyone goes through stressful events. If you know you have people you can count on, you may be less likely to even perceive a tough time as stressful. 

Spending time with friends can also help reduce stress . According to Harvard Medical School, "social connections help relieve levels of stress, which can harm the heart's arteries, gut function, insulin regulation, and the immune system."

Friends can also help you cope with stressful situations. According to one small study, when children hang out with their friends during a stressful situation, they produce less cortisol, a hormone released when the body is under stress.

As the song goes: “We all need somebody to lean on.”

A lack of friends can leave you feeling lonely and without support, which makes you vulnerable to other problems such as depression and substance abuse.

While we might all be pretty good at building online communities, our in person ones are seriously lacking. When we invest the energy in our friendships, and then encourage our friends to be friends with each other it fosters a sense of community.

A healthy community can help us feel more at home in our towns and cities When we're out and about and we see people we know—at the grocery store, at a local cafe, etc—it lets us know that we are part of something bigger and that we belong.

Friends Push You To Be Your Best

Ever heard some version of the phrase, "you are the average of the people you spend your time with"? The people we're friends with have the power to influence our own values and character. When you prioritize friendships with people who are generous with their time, help others, or are ambitious or family-oriented, you are more likely to develop those values yourself.

Great friends have the power to mold you into the best version of yourself. They see you and love you for who you truly are. They encourage you and push you to do better and be the person you want to be—your "ideal self."

There are many different components of friendship. If someone is loyal to you, honest with you, shares many of your interests, and is there for you when you need them, you would likely consider them a friend.

Many of the benefits of friends could be considered evolutionary—having a group of friends can create feelings of safety and social inclusion. Caring for others, and having others that care for you in turn, can help foster a collective purpose and feelings of self-worth.

Yang YC, Boen C, Gerken K, Li T, Schorpp K, Harris KM. Social relationships and physiological determinants of longevity across the human life span . Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A . 2016;113(3):578-583. doi:10.1073/pnas.1511085112

Holt-Lunstad J, Smith TB, Layton JB. Social relationships and mortality risk: A meta-analytic review . PLoS Med . 2010;7(7):e1000316. doi:10.1371/journal.pmed.1000316

Holt-Lunstad J, Smith TB, Baker M, Harris T, Stephenson D. Loneliness and social isolation as risk factors for mortality: A meta-analytic review . Perspect Psychol Sci . 2015;10(2):227-237. doi:10.1177/1745691614568352

Craddock E, vanDellen MR, Novak SA, Ranby KW. Influence in relationships: A meta-analysis on health-related social control . Basic Appl Soc Psych . 2015;37(2):118-130. doi:10.1080/01973533.2015.1011271

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Harvard Medical School. The health benefits of strong relationships .

Adams RE, Santo JB, Bukowski WM. The presence of a best friend buffers the effects of negative experiences . Dev Psychol . 2011;47(6):1786-1791. doi:10.1037/a0025401

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By Arlin Cuncic, MA Arlin Cuncic, MA, is the author of The Anxiety Workbook and founder of the website About Social Anxiety. She has a Master's degree in clinical psychology.

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Original research article, reflection through critical friendship: promoting growth of teachers.

• 1 Department of Art & Design, Mount St. Joseph University, Cincinnati, OH, United States
• 2 Asian American Studies Center, University of Houston, Houston, TX, United States
• 3 Department of Teaching, Learning and Culture, Texas A&M University, College Station, TX, United States
• 4 The Kinkaid School, Houston, TX, United States
• 5 Aldine Independent School District, Houston, TX, United States

This narrative inquiry draws on the longstanding collaborative work of the Portfolio Group (a cross-school, cross-institution teacher/teacher educator/researcher group) to explore the role of collaborative critical friendship in our group’s reflective practice and the influence on our individual growth as teachers/teacher educators/researchers. Narrative methods were employed, aided by a conceptual frame of reflection, critical friendship, and optimal experience. Results and discussion highlight how teacher practice is enhanced and strengthened when teachers come together as critical friends to share stories of experience, to examine experiential currents, undercurrents, and riptides (i.e., plotlines, dilemmas, contexts, interactions, politics, etc.), and to provide meaningful feedback that supports colleagues’ professional growth.

Introduction

School reform grant award were the originating events in which our longstanding cross-school, cross-discipline knowledge community ( Craig, 2007 ) was birthed in 1998 for the purposes of evidencing our work via school portfolios ( Craig et al., 2020 ; see also Lyons, 1990 , 2010 ). Back then, we were mostly a group of teachers with one university professor, Cheryl Craig, our schools’ Formative Evaluation Researcher spearheading the group. From the beginning, our campuses (Cochrane Academy, Heights Community Learning Center, Jefferson Middle School, Eagle High School) employed school portfolios as reflective tools to chronicle our reform efforts, thus showing each campus’s unique school story as a counter narrative to the prevailing high-stakes accountability approach.

The Portfolio Group was comprised of representatives from each of our campus portfolio committees, guided and mentored by Cheryl. We explored literature on how to evidence our work ( Connelly and Clandinin, 1990 ; Eisner, 1997 ), shared our teacher/school stories, and provided feedback to one another. Individual stories told/retold resonated ( Conle, 1996 ) among the group, breaking down imagined barriers of district boundaries, grade levels, and content specializations. In this way, our shared knowledge, learning, and experiences flowed from our campuses to the larger Portfolio Group and back to the campuses with new insights. Consequently, we came to better understand the situated experiences of others, creating portals ( Xu and Connelly, 2010 ) for better understanding not only our own campus experiences, but those of educators in the broader education landscape. Furthermore, we developed relationships characterized by reciprocity and support, forming critical friendships and becoming a knowledge community ( Craig, 1995 ).

When the school grants ended in 2002, so did funding for teacher stipends and grant coordinators. At some campuses, administrative support for the Portfolio Group’s work dried up as well. Consequently, our numbers diminished as individuals were given other campus duties and responsibilities that preempted participation. While at the time we were aware of some stories of leaving ( Craig, 2014 ), others are still coming to light. Some individuals, however, remained, continuing the reflective practice, critical friendship, and collaborative work of the Portfolio Group independent of fixed institutional ties. Where once we were mostly a collaborative teacher group, we now describe ourselves as a collaborative teacher/teacher educator/researcher group.

Our consensus is that the Portfolio Group is a generative space that benefits individual professional growth and fulfills the personal need for interaction with other reflective practitioners. We acknowledge that such collaboration requires time and energy and demands mindfulness and presence. Concurrently, it requires a willingness to be vulnerable in sharing one’s own experiences, to be open to new ideas, and, more importantly, to change. To better understand how collaborative groups like ours are fruitfully sustained, our collaborative work has taken up recurring streams of inquiry:

How can we learn from one another? What does it mean to be in relationship and in collaboration? In what ways does reflection improve practice? What are we taking back to our individual practice and school communities? ( Curtis et al., 2013 , p. 178).

These questions remain pertinent because there is no truth for all time but rather a truthiness that shifts with gained knowledge, understanding, and experience. The intent or inquiry behind them shifts according to our contemporary situations, professional growth, and experiences. These recurring questions were the provocations for this inquiry into the role of critical friendship in promoting group reflection and the ways in which group reflection shapes individual growth as teachers/teacher educators/researchers.

Conceptual framework

Our perspective of teacher reflection draws on the notion of “teachers as knowing persons” ( Clandinin, 1993 , p. 25) whose “teaching practices [are] expressions of personal practical knowledge…the experiential knowledge that [is] embodied in us as persons and [is] enacted in our classroom practices and in our lives” (p. 1). Lyons (1990) argues that ethical and epistemological dilemmas of knowing need to be included as part of teachers’ work (see also Lyons, 2010 ); Schön (1983 , 1995) believed this knowing-in-action called for a new epistemology. Reflexivity and criticality are essential components in purposeful reflection aimed at professional growth and improvement ( Ovens and Tinning, 2009 ). According to Fook (2015) , both reflective practice and critical reflection “involve an ongoing scrutiny of practice based on identifying the assumptions underlying it” (pp. 441–442). Osterman and Kottkamp (2004) suggest that “reflective practice is a challenging, demanding, and often trying process” (p. 2) that is frequently most successful as a collaborative endeavor.

Critical friendship

The idea of a critical friend or critical colleague has been attributed to Stenhouse (1975) in his writings on action research in curriculum development where he suggested that engaging one’s colleague(s) in the process provides different perspectives and meaningful feedback. Costa (2008) defines a critical friend as “a trusted person who asks provocative questions, provides data to be examined through another lens, and offers a critique of a person’s work as a friend” (p. 124). The primary purpose of feedback is aimed at supporting, and advocating for a colleague’s work and professional growth rather than for evaluation and judgment purposes ( Costa, 2008 ; see also Costa and Kallick, 1993 ). Early in our collaboration, Portfolio Group members participated in Critical Friends Group© (CFG©) professional development which was designed to promote teacher reflection and dialogue; providing tools that enhanced our group reflective practice and fine-tuned feedback.

Optimal experience

Building on Dewey’s (1938) notion of experience as not being a thing, but a “doing,” and rooted in the concept of flow ( Csikszentmihalyi, 1990 ), optimal experience is “a state in which people are so involved in an activity that nothing else [matters as much]; the experience is so enjoyable that people will continue to do it…for the sheer joy of doing it” ( Csikszentmihalyi, 1990 , p. 4; italics added). We have come to see that optimal experience has been foundational since the Portfolio Group’s inception. While our individual work in school sites has often been riddled with complexities and tensions, the opportunity to unpack the intricacies of these experiences in community with one another has been not only cathartic, but uplifting. These discussions rise to a higher plane as all members have experienced the phenomenon in question in one way or another. When deeper communication happens through critical introspection, the flow of shared experiences and understandings increases. This heightened awareness and interactions flow as experiences are added and connected to what was originally shared.

We sought to improve our practices by better understanding the interplay between reflection and critical friendship in collaborative groups such as ours and the ways in which that interplay shapes individual practice both inside and outside the group. To that end, two wonderings guided our examination: What has been the role of critical friendship in our group’s reflective practice? And in what ways has reflection influenced/shaped individual growth as a teacher/teacher educator/researcher?

Materials and methods

In examining individual teacher growth through collaborative group reflection, we adopted the narrative inquiry research method ( Clandinin and Connelly, 2000 ), a storied method employed to unpack narratives of experience ( Connelly and Clandinin, 1990 ; Caine et al., 2022 ). Clandinin and Connelly (2000) explain that:

…Experience, not narrative, is the driving impulse…narrative inquiry [is] a way to study experience…narrative is the closest we can come to experience…our guiding principle…is to focus on experience and to follow where it leads (p. 188).

Experience, as we understand it, pulls on the past and is informed by the present even as it reaches into an unknown future.

We each responded to our inquiry questions via online reflective writings. As a form of triangulation, we reached out to past Portfolio Group members from Eagle High School (Mari, Sandi, Paul, and Ron), adding their reflections to our data pool (used here with permission). We (the authors) then individually and collaboratively analyzed the reflective writings for emergent themes that sometimes crossed boundaries of campus portfolio committees and the larger Portfolio Group. Three interpretative devices underpin our chosen research method: (1) broadening, (2) burrowing, and (3) storying-restorying ( Clandinin and Connelly, 2000 ), all of which instantiate Dewey’s (1938) concept of education as “reconstruction without end.” To promote trustworthiness, we purposefully selected exemplars from the reflective writing pieces that showed transparency and authenticity of experience. Mishler (1990) explained that the essential criterion for such judgments is the degree to which we can rely on the concepts, methods, and inferences of a study, or tradition of inquiry, as the basis for our own theorizing and empirical research (p. 419).

Stories of experience

Analysis revealed various themes running through the group’s individual reflections like currents and undercurrents, along with occasional riptides. Like river currents, some narratives of experience underscored the flow of group interactions moving in a common direction toward professional growth. Other times, like powerful undercurrents, our stories highlighted the deep influence of reflective group practice and critical friendship on individual and school change. Still others called attention to the ways in which group reflection within a trusting knowledge community allows for the sharing of difficult stories that could potentially carry us out to sea like riptides, if not for the continued support of the group.

Current: Coming together as reflective practitioners

Reflections from Portfolio Group members present and past commonly began with beginning stories of coming together as reflective practitioners. Because their story resonated with what was happening across campuses, we chose to highlight a beginning story from Portfolio Group members Michaelann, Mari, Sandi, and Paul, all of whom worked at Eagle High School and were engaged in their campus portfolio committee. In this collectively retold story, the quartet reflected on how the threesome-turned-foursome came together around a common purpose and student success, even though there were distinct differences in their content areas, leadership styles, and personalities. We begin with retired social studies teacher, Mari, who explained.

Teachers and administrators called us the Trinity–Michaelann, Sandi, and I. We had great success working together resulting in our school receiving many grants. I think one reason for our success is that we were deeply rooted in our school’s and community’s cultures. Paul became an essential part of our collaborative group a bit later…he brought the student/alumni perspective…[and] the Trinity became the Four Seasons. Another contributing factor is that we all brought different talents. We celebrated these talents, but we also each understood our deficits and were comfortable with another team member reigning us in.

Retired English language arts teacher Sandi described the group.

We were a strange team, bound together by the love for our students…We only knew each other while passing in the halls, but a burden to create a better school for our kids knitted us together in a beautiful tapestry. We became a model for our campus in reflective practices, sharing our triumphs and failures openly with the Portfolio Group.

Sandi continued, explaining,

The one thing that we focused on was our students’ and school’s needs. Writing times stretched long into the nights, groping for the right word, the correct phrase that would showcase those sometimes-overwhelming needs. Each of us looked through different lenses, yet when put together, [it] became a beautiful kaleidoscope.

Paul (former mathematics teacher now mathematics consultant) had this to say,

The earth has seasons because, according to astronomical geometry, sunlight strikes the earth’s surface at different angles and with different intensities at different times of the year. Each season, with its differing amount of sunlight energy, comes together to paint a full picture of a year in time for any particular landscape. Likewise, four teacher leaders came together during Eagle High School’s ongoing reform journey. Each of us came to this leadership group with differing experiences…Each of those experiences yielded differing perspectives that came together, like the seasons do, to provide a fuller picture of our collective work in improving teaching to improve students’ learning experiences.

Regarding the whole group, Mari had this to say,

I guess what made our collaborative group work so well together…is that while we each brought something different to the table, we all shared a vision of what “could be.” We had all been trained in various reflective practices and critical friendship protocols which…allowed us to focus on the work and to really get to the heart of knowing how we knew something.

This story from the Portfolio Group teachers at Eagle High School echoes what occurred across all of our schools. The contemporary reflections illustrate the value placed on the poly-vocal, poly-perspectival aspect of group reflection. Mari’s statement of “sharing [their] triumphs and failures openly with the Portfolio Group” exhibited vulnerability and transparency, showing how critical friendship helped to create a safe space in which authentic reflection could take place, leading to professional growth. Gayle’s reflections (former grant coordinator/administrator at Heights Community Learning Center now program manager/post-doctoral researcher in higher education) summarized the role of reflective feedback in the larger Portfolio Group.

The feedback given by the Portfolio Group is…evidence of the intersection of reflective practice and critical friendship within the group as responses are mindful and aimed at supporting one another in our campus and individual growth. There has often been a narrative flow of experiences in the group in which experiences shared by one person…have later been experienced by others…This is when narrative plotlines seem to come full circle.

Current: Group reflection as a change in practice

Coming together with others as reflective practitioners was sometimes a new–or at least different–experience for Portfolio Group members. Donna (former English language arts teacher at Jefferson Middle School now at a local private PK-12 school), retold an originating story about reflection that occurred alongside other Portfolio Group members.

The first time I remember being asked to “reflect” rather than just “offer feedback” or “write in your journal” was at my Critical Friends Group© Coaches Training Seminar in 1998. At the end of the first day of our five-and-a-half-day training session, the facilitators asked our group of about thirty local educators to turn in written “reflections” that responded to the simple prompts “What worked?,” “What didn’t work?,” and “What do you need?” I dutifully responded on the triplicate paper with bland comments such as “Thank you for sticking to the agenda” and “I need more of the same!” (personal reflection; June 22, 1998) ( Reid, 2013 , p. 11).

Donna recalled her reaction when the group leaders responded to participant reflections, saying,

I was flabbergasted. The assurance that the leaders had actually read the individual reflections and changed their practice in response to our needs was incredibly empowering, and the act of sharing the written reflections aloud helped turn our group into a true community. Even if my exact words were not shared, I knew that I was not alone when I heard a similar thought in somebody else’s words. Often participants had radically different responses to the day’s activities, and that helped broaden our own perspectives. By the end of the week, I was writing more and more in my daily reflections ( Reid, 2013 , pp 11–12).

Similarly, the Portfolio Group introduced a safe reflective space for Annette, former community liaison at Cochrane Academy (now a district in-home parent trainer of children with disabilities).

As a woman of color, working with the Portfolio Group was the first time I was able to sit with a group of educators and talk about the ways in which culture shapes teaching and learning–especially the cultures of students at our different schools. Together we were able to dissect different learning styles and modalities of our students, like how some students need time to reflect and others need kinesthetic activities. When looking at the African American community at my school, for example, using different modalities from the arts, such as movement, music, visual arts, and drama, often enhanced student learning. Using these strategies across the content areas helped students grasp the concepts of math, science, language arts, and other subject areas. These conversations with fellow Portfolio Group members were enlightening to me. They…gave me relevant feedback to take back to and share with other campus teachers.

For Michaelann (former Eagle High School visual arts teacher now university assistant professor), the Portfolio Group introduced her to group reflection.

The Portfolio Group was the one place that my practice was challenged with questions of why and how rather than when and what. It was the first place that I was asked and expected to think about my teaching and the students’ learning. In my school, we were asked to do, to produce, and to prove that what we were doing in the classroom was “right.” The reflective piece came first for me…I started keeping journals…which were the foundation to my new learning. The collaboration was much more difficult for me, but very beneficial and rewarding. Now, I find myself wanting to engage in collaboration more and more in different contexts, as it enhances my individual practice.

These reflections suggest that while the Portfolio Group members may have engaged in reflection in their own practice, group reflection and discussion of practice was not a common occurrence on their campuses. The stories illustrate school contexts and the lack of space provided for teachers to engage in professional dialogue. Developing an organic approach to group reflection created an optimal experience across members within the Portfolio Group as illustrated in Donna writing more and more in her reflective journal, Annette finding a place as a woman of color in which she could engage in critical professional dialogue ( Placier et al., 2005 ) about the influence of culture in teaching and learning, and Michaelann looking for other collaborative spaces through which she experiences professional growth.

Undercurrent: Power of reflection and critical friendship in bringing about change

Individual reflections revealed the deeper influence on personal practice that came about through collaboration and group reflection. Reflecting on the group’s work, Sandi stated,

Our…team became a force that helped bring about great change in our school and presented opportunities for our kids. There’s a type of magic that happens when a team works toward a common goal.

Similarly, Michaelann wrote,

It seems the reason that we were able to do so much and accomplish so much with our campus portfolio work and in the larger Portfolio Group is because we were just working together to do our best for the students.

Considering the insights gained through group reflection on her campus, Donna shared,

The activities that first brought the Portfolio Group together…were also highly reflective and highly social. I spent so much time with other members of my school’s portfolio committee, and those shared discussions were invaluable to creating the feeling of shared mission and values that helped us take on social justice issues such as de-tracking academic classes. Reflecting as a group…gives people explicit insight into other people’s thinking and learning.

For Ron (retired Eagle High School visual arts teacher), the Portfolio Group introduced him to group reflection as a path to teacher growth.

The new practices of looking at my work through lesson plans and the evidence of artwork flipped a switch in my brain. I immediately saw a difference in my students’ written and visual work–which I had already thought was great. The members were across content areas and grade levels, but their input really helped me grow as a teacher and as a reflective practitioner. Looking back, it was because of the collaborative work at Eagle High School, the Portfolio Group, and critical friendships that I went from being a good teacher to a great teacher and can still be that life-long learner.

Annette shared a different perspective to group reflection within the Portfolio Group as she had left the group before the grant ended and recently returned after 20 years.

As a reflective educator, I left the group equipped to go out and be a leader. I know and understand how to engage teachers and administrators in critical conversations about what students need to achieve at their highest level. I am much more knowledgeable about teaching strategies, how to learn by listening to my colleagues’ reflections on their work and mine, and how to be a culturally responsive teacher for student cultures other than my own.

Paul shared the role of reflection in his campus group’s work saying,

A commonly held strong belief in the power of reflective practice tied the four of us together in common purpose and passion for our work…Our school’s espoused theory was that a careful combination of theory, action, and reflection would lead to better teachers which would then lead to better student learning. That espoused theory became reality through the power of reflection and critical friendship.

Gayle summed up her thoughts on the group’s reflective practice, saying,

It seems to me that reflective practice and critical friendship have simply become part of my identity. Both inform my practice and have helped to make me a better educator, a more caring collaborator, and a deeper-thinking researcher.

These reflections shared by individual Portfolio Group members show how their campus portfolio committees bonded around “passion,” “shared mission,” and “common purpose” in the school reform work which they then brought to the larger Portfolio Group’s work. They reveal the value that Portfolio Group members placed on reflectively engaging with critical friends in order to bring about individual change in practice, school change, and student success. This suggests that, for the Portfolio Group at least, reflection and critical friendship walk hand-in-hand, as do reflection, school improvement, and student success. As a result, the cross-school Portfolio Group became a safe haven where continuous streams of lived challenges were shared and tentative responses were entertained.

Riptide: The role of collaborative groups in navigating career challenges

Teachers/teacher educators face a myriad of challenges every day. The news presents us with school shootings, racial discrimination, and child abuse that teachers in our PK-12 schools must confront daily. One of the biggest challenges that receives very little media attention is how to be a good educator for all students in the ever-changing educational landscape. One way the Portfolio Group members navigate those treacherous waters is through collaboration, reflection, and critical friendship. Considering the interplay of reflection and critical friendship in our collaborative group, Gayle shared,

Reflective practice entered the Portfolio Group early on through the telling and retelling of our teacher stories/school stories which…gave rise to a great deal of professional dialogue—a group characteristic that continues. Importantly, these were (are) not stories shared as complainers but rather as professionals trying to make sense of our experiences or situations within particular settings. For example, when I needed to have a difficult conversation with an administrator about inappropriate behavior, the Portfolio Group provided a space in which to debrief the awkward but critical situation.

Despite the benefits of group reflection and dialogue experienced by Portfolio Group members, our school contexts were not always the most positive environments. Some campuses did not appreciate or value the role of reflective practice and teacher dialogue in promoting teacher growth and school improvement for student success. This underappreciation sometimes extended to teachers that had become school leaders or to teacher positions that had been created to carry out grant purposes. Such was the case for Mari, Paul, and Annette. Mari and Paul had taken on school leadership roles during the grant years. When funding ended and the administration no longer needed to rely on their skill sets, however, the principal began an organized plot to reclaim perceived leadership and power from the Four Seasons (Mari, Paul, Sandi, and Michaelann). Without disclosing details, the riptide became so powerful that Mari sought early retirement and Paul moved to another school district.

Annette had been hired as her campus’ community liaison to work extensively with parents and the community, offering education-related support and breaking down barriers between home, community, and school. When a change of administration occurred, Annette found herself in a less-than-favorable and unsupportive environment of accountability which initiated her story of leaving ( Craig, 2014 ) both the school and the Portfolio Group. She shared,

Even in the midst of all of the great school reform work happening and students thriving on our campus, we were getting push back from our new principal. A year before the grant ended, she was very concerned about the grant budget, especially in regard to paying grant-funded teacher stipends and salaries after the grant ended. She often made mention of not being able to continue to pay my salary, which came from grant money, the next year. This talk made me feel as though my salary was taking away money from students. After repeatedly hearing from my principal, I made a very hard decision to leave the school and its reform work and return to the classroom as a special education teacher at a different campus. It was such a deflating situation that I left the Portfolio Group without explaining what happened.

Annette’s story of leaving ( Craig, 2014 ) only came to light when she returned to the group in 2021. Her reflections on the years away from the Portfolio Group give insight into the personal and professional toll of her leaving the group.

During my time away from the group–my time at sea, so to speak–my path would cross with Michaelann’s. I was happy that the Portfolio Group was still together, because I know how much it helped me reflect and collaborate on my teaching practices. I also felt sad that I was not still a part of the group because no other district staff developments provided the opportunity to discuss what and how I teach students that included reflection, collaboration, and acknowledged my experiences.

Fortunately for us, Annette’s story of leaving became a story of returning when she serendipitously met Cheryl in a mall parking lot, leading to her return.

I had not worked with Cheryl and the group for years, but because of the professionalism and comradery of friendship she fosters, I received a warm and gracious welcome back. We all know that we can build on how well we worked together in the past, with Cheryl’s guidance, to do future initiatives to effectively develop teachers, and ultimately increase student success.

These reflective accounts show different ways the Portfolio Group supports one another in navigating career challenges and how some career challenges become stories of leaving. The story of Mari and Paul leaving public education suggests that teacher leadership may sometimes be interpreted as vie for power within school contexts. Because other Portfolio Group members left the group when the reform funding ended, we erroneously assumed that Annette’s departure followed the same plotline. It did not occur to us that an administrator with an ulterior motive had intervened and forced her hand. Annette’s story also reflects her valuing of reflecting as critical friends in community.

Riptide: Intersecting experiential stories of institutional narratives

What follows is a very recent example of the pinpointing of institutional narratives that Cheryl, Michaelann, and Gayle brought to the surface for critical examination over the course of this study. Some people think of narratives of experience ( Connelly and Clandinin, 1990 ) as being unique to us as individuals. Interacting with Portfolio Group colleagues as a knowledge community ( Craig, 1995 , 2007 ; Olson and Craig, 2001 ) engaged in critical friendship over time, however, have made us think otherwise.

When Cheryl shared her “fish jumps over the dragon gate” ( Craig, 2020b ) experience with the Portfolio Group a few years back, members quickly laid their personal stories alongside Cheryl’s ( Curtis et al., 2018 ). Recently, Michaelann shared a fresh plotline of experience, one that Cheryl previously had experienced, but not one that she had heard from others in the group or had had the opportunity to reflect on deeply. Within days, Cheryl had a second experience of the same variety and Gayle had chimed in with her own similar story. Each had encountered situations within their institutions in which they were encouraged to take certain actions that would acknowledge their work and positively impact their careers, only to be later informed that it was “not your turn.” Through engagement in critical perspective talking and group reflection, they were able to unpack and discuss similar situations in community. They realized that their institutions had unspoken plotlines and that they had been totally unaware of these under-the-surface narratives, naively thinking that decisions were based solely on meritorious activity. However, when the language of “whose turn it was” surfaced, they began to see their experiences nested in other institutional history and commitments. Fortunately, each of them had encountered faculty/staff who spoke truth to power, which aided their sense-making.

Despite Portfolio Group members being in different professional contexts, they experienced a shared bumping up of places where their personal stories collided with other institutional narratives. This revelation was more profound because three members experienced it and engaged in critical conversations in community.

Discussion: Currents, undercurrents, riptides, and present horizons currents

The micro-exemplars illustrated in the findings reflect how optimal or near-optimal experiences became the current in which the Portfolio Group members “swam.” Many times, we turned to past experiences and built on previous learning to continue our group and individual growth. The constant flow in the Portfolio Group was the collaboration among its members and their institutional backdrops. The reflective process utilized in the group was founded in our study of Schön ’s ( 1983 , 1995 ) work and CFG© professional development which became embedded in our way of working and being together. The act of critical friendship was no longer prescriptive and regimented but was an organic and professionally fulfilling approach to living and working toward a common goal of improvement of teaching and learning in each individual in a collaborative and highly reflective way.

Undercurrents

Underlying the reflective practice and critical friendship of the larger Portfolio Group and various campus portfolio committees was (and is) the deeper significance, or undercurrent, of working collaboratively for teacher professional growth and school change—all aimed at promoting opportunities for students that lead to their success. This undercurrent of improving student learning was the motivation for school reform work initiated in the Portfolio Group schools prior to the grant award and continued to be the driving force behind both our school-based and Portfolio Group-based collaborative work. Portfolio Group members found that, through reflection, collaboration, critical friendship, and shifting mindsets, teachers have the ability to act as conduits for change in the larger school and educational landscapes.

We have found in later research discussions that in some instances running with the current was not the optimal experience for all and became their story of leaving. Mari and Paul chose to leave their school rather than remain in a contentious setting. Similarly, Annette’s story paints a picture of professional fatigue in fighting against the administrative agendas. Just as a swimmer becomes fatigued fighting against the riptide, so did Mari, Paul, and Annette. They all voluntarily left their positions, but in retrospect their decisions were anything but voluntary. Still, these retired and former teachers desired to author their own stories in their own words—laced with their own experiences—thus showing how their sense of critical friendship and collaboration have transcended time, place, and profession. Mari now pours her strengths into church, cycling, and philanthropic endeavors, contributing greatly to education’s informal spaces and standing as exemplary role models of “stories to live by” ( Clandinin and Connelly, 1998 ) in their respective communities of knowing. Cheryl, Michaelann, and Gayle, through their interconnecting stories, make public the underlying plotline of something “not being their turn.” They highlight how institutional agendas crash, causing riptides for those who have been predestined to be part of their plotlines.

Present horizons

Past Portfolio Group members Mari, Sandi, Paul, and Ron have become better teachers through reflection, critical friendship, and collaboration and have continued on that journey, having taken up very different—although complementary—pathways in education’s informal spaces. Continuing their work in formal education landscapes, Michaelann, Donna, Annette, Gayle, and Cheryl not only attribute reflection, critical friendship, and collaboration in the Portfolio Group to their professional growth, but also to their remaining in education. Their professional longevity stands as a counterpoint to what Texas A&M psychologist and professor of business administration Anthony Klotz coined “the Great Resignation” ( Lodewick, 2022 ).

Closing thoughts

The final piece of the puzzle, the one that brings the whole Portfolio Group picture into focus is the school’s university-based external formative evaluator. The schools in the Portfolio Group had many things in common, but what turned out to be the most important commonplace was the interactions of the school committees under the guidance of Cheryl Craig. She brought to the table both the understanding of and experiences with collaboration and reflection that the school-based teachers had never before experienced. The theoretical and practical experience Cheryl had in Canada at the University of Alberta seemed to be what our schools most needed. She showed Portfolio Group members how to be and interact collaboratively rather than competitively. Cheryl also guided the group into understanding the difference between “proving” and “improving,” beginning with our school portfolio-making. The shifting of members’ perceptions and perspectives into seeing multiple ways of knowing (multiperspectival knowing) while claiming their narrative authority ( Craig and Olson, 2002 ) was (and is) pivotal to the longevity of the Portfolio Group. Cheryl’s eyes were (and are) cast on shared experiences, which we have neither linked nor critically unpacked. She has known that ongoing critical inquiry around shared experiential stories is the glue that would hold our group together long after the reform-based portfolio work and funding ceased.

Optimal experience is intense in the doing and perhaps these micro-exemplars are even more optimal because such experiences were had and unpacked alongside others/in community with one another. For example, Donna’s story of having leaders value your reflections would have been powerful in and of itself, but possibly because it happened in collaboration with other Portfolio Group members was even more optimal. The opening story of Eagle High School illustrates how working in a reflective group was the right undercurrent or optimal experience to swiftly move a school campus from one of independent educators to a school with a single mission: student success ( Reyes and Phillips, 2003 ).

What made less-than-positive experiences optimal, was not the experiences themselves which were negative, but the critical reflection and unpeeling of the experiences, making critical reflection in community the optimal experience and the less-than-positive experiences merely pathways to richer understandings. This was recounted in the riptide of Cheryl, Michaelann, and Gayle having to “wait their turn.” Others that had had negative experiences such as Annette’s story of leaving found their optimal experience in the reflective practice and collaboration with the Portfolio Group and ultimately her story of returning to her knowledge community.

According to Conle (2001) , “narrative is used both for the gathering and the representation of data which are usually created and revised collaboratively between researchers and their “subjects” (p. 21). We, the members of the Portfolio Group, walked on both or probably multiple sides of the line between researcher and researched through the years. Many times, we were looking as teacher researchers and reflecting upon our classroom/educational setting and then other times we were both researcher and subject. Gathering and re-examining our group’s history through storied experiences also highlighted the ways in which the skillsets gained through our collaboration (e.g., group facilitation, interpersonal communication, being non-competitive in the group but competitive outside the group in applying for funding, composing collaborative texts, etc.) improved our individual practices and our range of experience, which was particularly important as some moved to district positions or to university settings. The common thread across the stories is our work…from teaching to school portfolios, to examining literature together, to action research to improve teaching/learning, to teacher research on broader education topics…consistently returning us to our shared scholarship and optimal experiences. And, as Conle (2001) points out,

This seems appropriate if one considers good teaching not primarily as an accomplishment in appropriate planning, excellent techniques, and thoughtful pedagogical moves, but as a lived accomplishment that is intimately linked to the way one lives one’s life and relates to people and deals with patterns of teaching and learning that were acquired earlier in life (p. 22).

In the beginning and as we continue, we are a group of educators collaboratively living and working to become better teachers. Through reflective learning, we thrive as we become our best-loved selves ( Craig, 2013 , 2017 , 2020a ; Li et al., 2019 ; McDonald, 2021 ; Schwab, 1954/1978 ) in a knowledge community buoyed by critical friendship.

Data availability statement

The original contributions presented in this study are included in the article/supplementary material, further inquiries can be directed to the corresponding author.

Author contributions

MK, GC, and CC: research topic, methods, and design. MK, GC, CC, DR, and AE: data collection, analysis, and research text. All authors contributed to the article and approved the submitted version.

Conflict of interest

The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.

Publisher’s note

All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article, or claim that may be made by its manufacturer, is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.

Caine, V., Clandinin, D. J., and Lessard, S. (2022). Narrative inquiry: Philosophical roots. New York, NY: Bloomsbury Academic. doi: 10.5040/9781350142084

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Keywords : critical friendship, knowledge communities, optimal experience, reflective practice, teacher collaboration, narrative inquiry

Citation: Kelley M, Curtis GA, Craig CJ, Reid D and Easley A (2022) Reflection through critical friendship: Promoting growth of teachers. Front. Educ. 7:1056471. doi: 10.3389/feduc.2022.1056471

Received: 28 September 2022; Accepted: 01 November 2022; Published: 15 November 2022.

Reviewed by:

Copyright © 2022 Kelley, Curtis, Craig, Reid and Easley. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY) . The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) and the copyright owner(s) are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

*Correspondence: Gayle A. Curtis, [email protected]

This article is part of the Research Topic

The Role of Reflection in Teacher and Teacher Educator Development

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Critical thinking and Relationships: How critical thinking can help your relationships in life.

Everyone always says that communication is key – especially for couples. And in this modern age of passive communication, this is certainly true now more than ever. However, many people still struggle to find the right words to convey what they want to say. How can you communicate effectively when you can’t formulate what you want to say?

This is where studies have found that critical thinking can come in handy. In fact, many people have sworn that it has taken their relationships (with their partner, family, children, etc.) to a whole other level. It has helped them to think about what they are feeling and to express this clearly and concisely.

So, what is critical thinking?

Critical thinking is analyzing facts to form opinions and judgments. It is learning to think rationally, clearly, and with precision, allowing you to express your thoughts in an orderly manner. This then allows you to get your point of view across clearly, removing any confusion about your stance.

Studying critical thinking allows you to take the information that you are presented with (this can be facts, opinions, or even a situation), evaluate it accordingly, and then formulate and express your judgment on it.

The whole process moves cleanly from point A to point B via you. It removes most emotions from the process, meaning that any rash or quick decisions and judgments are not accounted for. Instead, what you are left with is a rational and well-defined conclusion.

How can this help in a relationship?

Critical thinking and relationships are more closely connected than you may think. How many times have you been quick to judge someone or a situation? Did you get hot-headed? Angry? Frustrated? These flash emotions are the exact opposite of the critical thinking process.

You may feel a certain way without knowing why. That is exactly where critical thinking and relationships should bond together. They allow you to analyze the situation and only then form your opinion, removing any non-calculated decisions.

Here we will tell you a few ways that applying critical thinking to your relationships can change them for the better.

Misunderstandings and communication

We all know that people are very quick to see red. This can be for a multitude of reasons, either someone has wronged us, possibly wronged us, we have done someone wrong, etc. However, we often become angry before we are even aware of the complete picture.

For example, if you become angry because you notice that your partner has been a little absent lately and that they have been spending a lot more time on their phone and hiding emails from you then you may assume that they are cheating on you. This is certainly not an unreasonable assumption.

However, it is exactly that – an assumption. Of course, their behavior may seem suspicious but in reality, you are projecting negative thoughts onto the situation. Consider for a moment the fact that planning a surprise birthday party for you would require the same actions.

So, how can critical thinking help here? Well, instead of assuming the worst, consider the facts. Only then can you make an appropriate conclusion and take the necessary steps.

Communicate with your partner how you are feeling and explain rationally and calmly your concerns. Leave the emotion out of the situation. You may find out that the only problem was created in your mind.

Communication at work

Another great example of how critical thinking helps with relationships is at work. Critical thinking allows you to make your point of view in a convincing and effective way. This means that when you are talking to people in senior positions you will come across as a much more professional and rational person.

This can come in handy for a multitude of reasons. If you are looking to present a pitch in front of your boss and other senior people within the company then being able to talk clearly, concisely and with purpose is a very good skill in your arsenal.

It will allow them to fully understand and evaluate your ideas, rather than get lost spending time trying to decipher what you are saying.

Similarly, if you are looking for a raise or promotion at work then critical thinking helps you put together your case. You can take facts and turn them into persuasive arguments.

Anger and communication

Even with your relationships with your friend’s critical thinking can help. This is because thinking fully and completely about the facts helps you to remain level-headed. This means that arguments will (hopefully) no longer escalate out of control. Often when this happens people say things that they do not really mean and feelings are easily hurt.

So, critical thinking can also help you to become a better friend. You can deescalate the situation easily and explain your point of view without causing any offense or irritating the situation.

By rationally understanding your emotions you can learn to control them. However, this does not mean that they are invalid. Instead, they are simply rationalized. Critical thinking allows you to take a step back from the heat of the moment and evaluate why you are feeling how you are feeling. Do you have a valid reason for this feeling? Is it based on facts?

By learning to understand why you can concentrate on achieving a better conclusion. You can think more clearly which means that you can come across in a better manner. You can appear more personable, reliable, and even more likable and professional.

Critical thinking does not just apply to one sphere of your life in terms of relationships, but to all of them. Whether you are worried about relationships with your friends, your boss or even your spouse then learning how to think via critical thinking can help improve your communication skills. This in turn helps to improve your relationships for the better.

5 Ways To Benefit From Critical Thinking in Relationships

Identification of Relationships between Emotional Intelligence Skill & Critical Thinking Disposition in Undergraduate Leadership Students

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Created by the Great Schools Partnership , the GLOSSARY OF EDUCATION REFORM is a comprehensive online resource that describes widely used school-improvement terms, concepts, and strategies for journalists, parents, and community members. | Learn more »

Critical Friend

A critical friend is typically a colleague or other educational professional, such as a school coach , who is committed to helping an educator or school improve. A critical friend is someone who is encouraging and supportive, but who also provides honest and often candid feedback that may be uncomfortable or difficult to hear. In short, a critical friend is someone who agrees to speak truthfully, but constructively, about weaknesses, problems, and emotionally charged issues.

In education, the term critical friend was introduced in 1994 by the Annenberg Institute for School Reform , which began advocating a teacher-led approach to professional development called critical friends groups or professional learning communities —groups of educators who meet regularly, engage in structured professional discussions, and work collaboratively to improve their school or teaching skills. (It should be noted that some educators may not consider critical friends groups and professional learning communities to be strictly synonymous, and they may define both the terms and purpose of the strategies differently.) The National School Reform Faculty  is widely considered to have popularized the term critical friends group .

The term critical friend , however, is also used more broadly outside of professional learning groups. The role of a critical friend is, generally speaking, based on the recognition that both professional and organizational improvement can be impeded when people and groups avoid facing hard truths, emotionally difficult subjects, and frank assessments of their own performance. At the same time, the critical-friend role is also based on the recognition that people will tend to continue avoiding hard truths, emotional subjects, and frank assessments of performance if these issues are not handled constructively, supportively, and professionally. For these reasons, critical friends—whether they are colleagues in a school or outside professionals—are believed to play a valuable role in helping educators improve their school or their teaching.

For a related discussion, see school coach .

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Critical Thinking and Decision-Making  - What is Critical Thinking?

Critical thinking and decision-making  -, what is critical thinking, critical thinking and decision-making what is critical thinking.

Critical Thinking and Decision-Making: What is Critical Thinking?

Lesson 1: what is critical thinking, what is critical thinking.

Critical thinking is a term that gets thrown around a lot. You've probably heard it used often throughout the years whether it was in school, at work, or in everyday conversation. But when you stop to think about it, what exactly is critical thinking and how do you do it ?

Watch the video below to learn more about critical thinking.

Simply put, critical thinking is the act of deliberately analyzing information so that you can make better judgements and decisions . It involves using things like logic, reasoning, and creativity, to draw conclusions and generally understand things better.

This may sound like a pretty broad definition, and that's because critical thinking is a broad skill that can be applied to so many different situations. You can use it to prepare for a job interview, manage your time better, make decisions about purchasing things, and so much more.

The process

As humans, we are constantly thinking . It's something we can't turn off. But not all of it is critical thinking. No one thinks critically 100% of the time... that would be pretty exhausting! Instead, it's an intentional process , something that we consciously use when we're presented with difficult problems or important decisions.

Improving your critical thinking

In order to become a better critical thinker, it's important to ask questions when you're presented with a problem or decision, before jumping to any conclusions. You can start with simple ones like What do I currently know? and How do I know this? These can help to give you a better idea of what you're working with and, in some cases, simplify more complex issues.  

Real-world applications

Let's take a look at how we can use critical thinking to evaluate online information . Say a friend of yours posts a news article on social media and you're drawn to its headline. If you were to use your everyday automatic thinking, you might accept it as fact and move on. But if you were thinking critically, you would first analyze the available information and ask some questions :

• What's the source of this article?
• Is the headline potentially misleading?
• What are my friend's general beliefs?
• Do their beliefs inform why they might have shared this?

After analyzing all of this information, you can draw a conclusion about whether or not you think the article is trustworthy.

Critical thinking has a wide range of real-world applications . It can help you to make better decisions, become more hireable, and generally better understand the world around you.

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Home » Blog » General » Building Strong Friendships: Free Printable Worksheets for Social Emotional Learning

Building Strong Friendships: Free Printable Worksheets for Social Emotional Learning

Friendships play a crucial role in our lives, providing support, companionship, and a sense of belonging. Building strong friendships is essential for our social and emotional well-being. In this blog post, we will explore the importance of strong friendships and how Social Emotional Learning (SEL) can contribute to their development. Additionally, we will introduce free printable worksheets that can be used to enhance SEL skills and promote positive friendships.

I. Introduction

A. Importance of building strong friendships

Having strong friendships is vital for our overall well-being. Friends provide emotional support, help us navigate challenges, and celebrate our successes. They also contribute to our sense of identity and belonging.

B. Overview of Social Emotional Learning (SEL)

Social Emotional Learning (SEL) is an educational approach that focuses on developing skills to manage emotions, establish positive relationships, and make responsible decisions. SEL equips individuals with the tools they need to navigate social interactions and build strong friendships.

C. Introducing the topic of free printable worksheets for SEL

Free printable worksheets are valuable resources for promoting SEL skills. These worksheets provide structured activities and exercises that can enhance self-awareness, empathy, communication, and problem-solving abilities. In the context of friendships, these worksheets can help individuals develop the necessary skills to build and maintain positive relationships.

II. Understanding Friendship

A. Definition of friendship

Friendship is a mutual relationship between two or more individuals characterized by trust, support, and shared interests. It is a bond that goes beyond mere acquaintanceship and involves emotional connection and reciprocity.

B. Benefits of having strong friendships

Strong friendships offer numerous benefits, including:

• Emotional support during challenging times
• Increased self-esteem and confidence
• Enhanced social skills and communication abilities
• Reduced feelings of loneliness and isolation
• Opportunities for personal growth and self-discovery

C. Characteristics of a good friend

A good friend possesses certain qualities that contribute to a healthy and positive friendship. These qualities include:

• Trustworthiness and reliability
• Empathy and understanding
• Good communication skills
• Respect for boundaries and individuality
• Supportiveness and encouragement

III. Social Emotional Learning and Friendship

A. How SEL skills contribute to building strong friendships

SEL skills are essential for building and maintaining strong friendships. These skills enable individuals to understand and manage their emotions, empathize with others, communicate effectively, and resolve conflicts. By developing these skills, individuals can establish and nurture positive relationships.

B. SEL competencies related to friendship

SEL encompasses five core competencies that are directly related to building strong friendships:

• Self-awareness: Understanding one’s own emotions, strengths, and weaknesses.
• Self-management: Regulating emotions, setting goals, and making responsible decisions.
• Social awareness: Empathizing with others, understanding their perspectives, and appreciating diversity.
• Relationship skills: Communicating effectively, resolving conflicts, and establishing and maintaining healthy relationships.
• Responsible decision-making: Evaluating options, considering consequences, and making ethical choices.

IV. Introducing Free Printable Friendship Worksheets

A. Importance of using worksheets for SEL

Worksheets are valuable tools for promoting SEL skills. They provide structured activities that engage individuals in self-reflection, critical thinking, and skill development. Worksheets also offer a tangible way to track progress and reinforce learning.

B. Benefits of using free printable worksheets

Free printable worksheets have several advantages:

• Accessibility: They are easily accessible and can be downloaded and printed from various online platforms.
• Cost-effective: They eliminate the need for purchasing expensive resources.
• Customizability: They can be tailored to meet specific needs and preferences.
• Flexibility: They can be used in various settings, including classrooms, therapy sessions, or at home.

C. Overview of the available worksheets

There are several free printable friendship worksheets available that target different aspects of building strong friendships:

• Worksheet 1: Identifying personal qualities of a good friend – This worksheet helps individuals reflect on the qualities they value in a friend and identify their own strengths and areas for growth.
• Worksheet 2: Reflecting on past friendships – This worksheet encourages individuals to reflect on past friendships, identify patterns, and learn from past experiences.
• Worksheet 3: Understanding empathy in friendships – This worksheet explores the concept of empathy and helps individuals develop empathy skills necessary for building strong friendships.
• Worksheet 4: Practicing active listening skills – This worksheet provides activities to enhance active listening skills, a crucial component of effective communication in friendships.
• Worksheet 5: Resolving conflicts in friendships – This worksheet offers strategies for resolving conflicts in friendships and promotes healthy conflict resolution skills.

V. How to Use the Worksheets

A. Step-by-step guide for using the worksheets effectively

Follow these steps to make the most of the free printable friendship worksheets:

• Download and print the worksheets from a reliable online platform.
• Review the instructions and objectives of each worksheet.
• Engage in the activities and exercises individually or in a group setting.
• Reflect on the responses and discuss insights with others.
• Apply the skills and strategies learned in real-life situations.

B. Tips for facilitating discussions and activities based on the worksheets

When using the worksheets, consider the following tips to facilitate meaningful discussions and activities:

• Create a safe and supportive environment for sharing thoughts and experiences.
• Encourage active participation and respectful listening.
• Ask open-ended questions to promote critical thinking and deeper reflection.
• Provide positive reinforcement and constructive feedback.
• Adapt the activities to suit the age and developmental level of the individuals.

C. Incorporating the worksheets into daily routines or classroom settings

The worksheets can be integrated into daily routines or classroom settings to reinforce SEL skills and promote positive friendships. Consider incorporating them into morning meetings, advisory periods, or as part of a comprehensive SEL curriculum.

VI. Additional Resources for Building Strong Friendships

A. Online platforms offering free printable friendship worksheets

Several online platforms provide free printable friendship worksheets that can be accessed and downloaded:

• EverydaySpeech: Offers a wide range of free printable worksheets for SEL, including those focused on friendship. Start your EverydaySpeech Free trial today to access these resources.
• Education.com: Provides a collection of free printable worksheets on friendship and social skills.
• Teachers Pay Teachers: Offers a variety of free and paid friendship worksheets created by educators.

B. Books and literature on friendship and SEL

Books and literature can serve as valuable resources for exploring friendship and SEL. Some recommended titles include:

• “The Invisible Boy” by Trudy Ludwig
• “The Giving Tree” by Shel Silverstein
• “Have You Filled a Bucket Today?” by Carol McCloud
• “My Mouth Is a Volcano!” by Julia Cook

C. Websites and organizations providing further guidance on SEL and friendship

For additional guidance and information on SEL and friendship, consider exploring the following websites and organizations:

• Collaborative for Academic, Social, and Emotional Learning (CASEL)
• Positive Psychology Program
• Social Emotional Learning Alliance for Massachusetts (SEL4MA)

VII. Conclusion

A. Recap of the importance of building strong friendships

Building strong friendships is essential for our social and emotional well-being. Friends provide support, companionship, and contribute to our sense of belonging.

B. Encouragement to utilize free printable friendship worksheets for SEL

Free printable friendship worksheets are valuable tools for promoting SEL skills and fostering positive friendships. They provide structured activities and exercises that enhance self-awareness, empathy, communication, and problem-solving abilities.

C. Final thoughts on the role of SEL in fostering positive relationships

Social Emotional Learning plays a crucial role in fostering positive relationships, including friendships. By developing SEL skills, individuals can navigate social interactions, understand and manage emotions, and establish and maintain healthy and fulfilling friendships.

Start your EverydaySpeech Free trial today to access a wide range of free printable friendship worksheets and enhance your Social Emotional Learning journey.

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Critical thinking definition

Critical thinking, as described by Oxford Languages, is the objective analysis and evaluation of an issue in order to form a judgement.

Active and skillful approach, evaluation, assessment, synthesis, and/or evaluation of information obtained from, or made by, observation, knowledge, reflection, acumen or conversation, as a guide to belief and action, requires the critical thinking process, which is why it's often used in education and academics.

Some even may view it as a backbone of modern thought.

However, it's a skill, and skills must be trained and encouraged to be used at its full potential.

People turn up to various approaches in improving their critical thinking, like:

• Developing technical and problem-solving skills
• Engaging in more active listening
• Actively questioning their assumptions and beliefs
• Seeking out more diversity of thought
• Opening up their curiosity in an intellectual way etc.

Is critical thinking useful in writing?

Critical thinking can help in planning your paper and making it more concise, but it's not obvious at first. We carefully pinpointed some the questions you should ask yourself when boosting critical thinking in writing:

• What information should be included?
• Which information resources should the author look to?
• What degree of technical knowledge should the report assume its audience has?
• What is the most effective way to show information?
• How should the report be organized?
• How should it be designed?
• What tone and level of language difficulty should the document have?

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1 Introduction to Critical Thinking

I. what is c ritical t hinking [1].

Critical thinking is the ability to think clearly and rationally about what to do or what to believe.  It includes the ability to engage in reflective and independent thinking. Someone with critical thinking skills is able to do the following:

• Understand the logical connections between ideas.
• Identify, construct, and evaluate arguments.
• Detect inconsistencies and common mistakes in reasoning.
• Solve problems systematically.
• Identify the relevance and importance of ideas.
• Reflect on the justification of one’s own beliefs and values.

Critical thinking is not simply a matter of accumulating information. A person with a good memory and who knows a lot of facts is not necessarily good at critical thinking. Critical thinkers are able to deduce consequences from what they know, make use of information to solve problems, and to seek relevant sources of information to inform themselves.

Critical thinking should not be confused with being argumentative or being critical of other people. Although critical thinking skills can be used in exposing fallacies and bad reasoning, critical thinking can also play an important role in cooperative reasoning and constructive tasks. Critical thinking can help us acquire knowledge, improve our theories, and strengthen arguments. We can also use critical thinking to enhance work processes and improve social institutions.

Some people believe that critical thinking hinders creativity because critical thinking requires following the rules of logic and rationality, whereas creativity might require breaking those rules. This is a misconception. Critical thinking is quite compatible with thinking “out-of-the-box,” challenging consensus views, and pursuing less popular approaches. If anything, critical thinking is an essential part of creativity because we need critical thinking to evaluate and improve our creative ideas.

II. The I mportance of C ritical T hinking

Critical thinking is a domain-general thinking skill. The ability to think clearly and rationally is important whatever we choose to do. If you work in education, research, finance, management or the legal profession, then critical thinking is obviously important. But critical thinking skills are not restricted to a particular subject area. Being able to think well and solve problems systematically is an asset for any career.

Critical thinking is very important in the new knowledge economy.  The global knowledge economy is driven by information and technology. One has to be able to deal with changes quickly and effectively. The new economy places increasing demands on flexible intellectual skills, and the ability to analyze information and integrate diverse sources of knowledge in solving problems. Good critical thinking promotes such thinking skills, and is very important in the fast-changing workplace.

Critical thinking enhances language and presentation skills. Thinking clearly and systematically can improve the way we express our ideas. In learning how to analyze the logical structure of texts, critical thinking also improves comprehension abilities.

Critical thinking promotes creativity. To come up with a creative solution to a problem involves not just having new ideas. It must also be the case that the new ideas being generated are useful and relevant to the task at hand. Critical thinking plays a crucial role in evaluating new ideas, selecting the best ones and modifying them if necessary.

Critical thinking is crucial for self-reflection. In order to live a meaningful life and to structure our lives accordingly, we need to justify and reflect on our values and decisions. Critical thinking provides the tools for this process of self-evaluation.

Good critical thinking is the foundation of science and democracy. Science requires the critical use of reason in experimentation and theory confirmation. The proper functioning of a liberal democracy requires citizens who can think critically about social issues to inform their judgments about proper governance and to overcome biases and prejudice.

Critical thinking is a   metacognitive skill . What this means is that it is a higher-level cognitive skill that involves thinking about thinking. We have to be aware of the good principles of reasoning, and be reflective about our own reasoning. In addition, we often need to make a conscious effort to improve ourselves, avoid biases, and maintain objectivity. This is notoriously hard to do. We are all able to think but to think well often requires a long period of training. The mastery of critical thinking is similar to the mastery of many other skills. There are three important components: theory, practice, and attitude.

III. Improv ing O ur T hinking S kills

If we want to think correctly, we need to follow the correct rules of reasoning. Knowledge of theory includes knowledge of these rules. These are the basic principles of critical thinking, such as the laws of logic, and the methods of scientific reasoning, etc.

Also, it would be useful to know something about what not to do if we want to reason correctly. This means we should have some basic knowledge of the mistakes that people make. First, this requires some knowledge of typical fallacies. Second, psychologists have discovered persistent biases and limitations in human reasoning. An awareness of these empirical findings will alert us to potential problems.

However, merely knowing the principles that distinguish good and bad reasoning is not enough. We might study in the classroom about how to swim, and learn about the basic theory, such as the fact that one should not breathe underwater. But unless we can apply such theoretical knowledge through constant practice, we might not actually be able to swim.

Similarly, to be good at critical thinking skills it is necessary to internalize the theoretical principles so that we can actually apply them in daily life. There are at least two ways to do this. One is to perform lots of quality exercises. These exercises don’t just include practicing in the classroom or receiving tutorials; they also include engaging in discussions and debates with other people in our daily lives, where the principles of critical thinking can be applied. The second method is to think more deeply about the principles that we have acquired. In the human mind, memory and understanding are acquired through making connections between ideas.

Good critical thinking skills require more than just knowledge and practice. Persistent practice can bring about improvements only if one has the right kind of motivation and attitude. The following attitudes are not uncommon, but they are obstacles to critical thinking:

• I prefer being given the correct answers rather than figuring them out myself.
• I don’t like to think a lot about my decisions as I rely only on gut feelings.
• I don’t usually review the mistakes I have made.
• I don’t like to be criticized.

To improve our thinking we have to recognize the importance of reflecting on the reasons for belief and action. We should also be willing to engage in debate, break old habits, and deal with linguistic complexities and abstract concepts.

The  California Critical Thinking Disposition Inventory  is a psychological test that is used to measure whether people are disposed to think critically. It measures the seven different thinking habits listed below, and it is useful to ask ourselves to what extent they describe the way we think:

• Truth-Seeking—Do you try to understand how things really are? Are you interested in finding out the truth?
• Open-Mindedness—How receptive are you to new ideas, even when you do not intuitively agree with them? Do you give new concepts a fair hearing?
• Analyticity—Do you try to understand the reasons behind things? Do you act impulsively or do you evaluate the pros and cons of your decisions?
• Systematicity—Are you systematic in your thinking? Do you break down a complex problem into parts?
• Confidence in Reasoning—Do you always defer to other people? How confident are you in your own judgment? Do you have reasons for your confidence? Do you have a way to evaluate your own thinking?
• Inquisitiveness—Are you curious about unfamiliar topics and resolving complicated problems? Will you chase down an answer until you find it?
• Maturity of Judgment—Do you jump to conclusions? Do you try to see things from different perspectives? Do you take other people’s experiences into account?

Finally, as mentioned earlier, psychologists have discovered over the years that human reasoning can be easily affected by a variety of cognitive biases. For example, people tend to be over-confident of their abilities and focus too much on evidence that supports their pre-existing opinions. We should be alert to these biases in our attitudes towards our own thinking.

IV. Defining Critical Thinking

There are many different definitions of critical thinking. Here we list some of the well-known ones. You might notice that they all emphasize the importance of clarity and rationality. Here we will look at some well-known definitions in chronological order.

1) Many people trace the importance of critical thinking in education to the early twentieth-century American philosopher John Dewey. But Dewey did not make very extensive use of the term “critical thinking.” Instead, in his book  How We Think (1910), he argued for the importance of what he called “reflective thinking”:

…[when] the ground or basis for a belief is deliberately sought and its adequacy to support the belief examined. This process is called reflective thought; it alone is truly educative in value…

Active, persistent and careful consideration of any belief or supposed form of knowledge in light of the grounds that support it, and the further conclusions to which it tends, constitutes reflective thought.

There is however one passage from How We Think where Dewey explicitly uses the term “critical thinking”:

The essence of critical thinking is suspended judgment; and the essence of this suspense is inquiry to determine the nature of the problem before proceeding to attempts at its solution. This, more than any other thing, transforms mere inference into tested inference, suggested conclusions into proof.

2) The  Watson-Glaser Critical Thinking Appraisal  (1980) is a well-known psychological test of critical thinking ability. The authors of this test define critical thinking as:

…a composite of attitudes, knowledge and skills. This composite includes: (1) attitudes of inquiry that involve an ability to recognize the existence of problems and an acceptance of the general need for evidence in support of what is asserted to be true; (2) knowledge of the nature of valid inferences, abstractions, and generalizations in which the weight or accuracy of different kinds of evidence are logically determined; and (3) skills in employing and applying the above attitudes and knowledge.

3) A very well-known and influential definition of critical thinking comes from philosopher and professor Robert Ennis in his work “A Taxonomy of Critical Thinking Dispositions and Abilities” (1987):

Critical thinking is reasonable reflective thinking that is focused on deciding what to believe or do.

4) The following definition comes from a statement written in 1987 by the philosophers Michael Scriven and Richard Paul for the  National Council for Excellence in Critical Thinking (link), an organization promoting critical thinking in the US:

Critical thinking is the intellectually disciplined process of actively and skillfully conceptualizing, applying, analyzing, synthesizing, and/or evaluating information gathered from, or generated by, observation, experience, reflection, reasoning, or communication, as a guide to belief and action. In its exemplary form, it is based on universal intellectual values that transcend subject matter divisions: clarity, accuracy, precision, consistency, relevance, sound evidence, good reasons, depth, breadth, and fairness. It entails the examination of those structures or elements of thought implicit in all reasoning: purpose, problem, or question-at-issue, assumptions, concepts, empirical grounding; reasoning leading to conclusions, implications and consequences, objections from alternative viewpoints, and frame of reference.

The following excerpt from Peter A. Facione’s “Critical Thinking: A Statement of Expert Consensus for Purposes of Educational Assessment and Instruction” (1990) is quoted from a report written for the American Philosophical Association:

We understand critical thinking to be purposeful, self-regulatory judgment which results in interpretation, analysis, evaluation, and inference, as well as explanation of the evidential, conceptual, methodological, criteriological, or contextual considerations upon which that judgment is based. CT is essential as a tool of inquiry. As such, CT is a liberating force in education and a powerful resource in one’s personal and civic life. While not synonymous with good thinking, CT is a pervasive and self-rectifying human phenomenon. The ideal critical thinker is habitually inquisitive, well-informed, trustful of reason, open-minded, flexible, fairminded in evaluation, honest in facing personal biases, prudent in making judgments, willing to reconsider, clear about issues, orderly in complex matters, diligent in seeking relevant information, reasonable in the selection of criteria, focused in inquiry, and persistent in seeking results which are as precise as the subject and the circumstances of inquiry permit. Thus, educating good critical thinkers means working toward this ideal. It combines developing CT skills with nurturing those dispositions which consistently yield useful insights and which are the basis of a rational and democratic society.

V. Two F eatures of C ritical T hinking

A. how not what .

Critical thinking is concerned not with what you believe, but rather how or why you believe it. Most classes, such as those on biology or chemistry, teach you what to believe about a subject matter. In contrast, critical thinking is not particularly interested in what the world is, in fact, like. Rather, critical thinking will teach you how to form beliefs and how to think. It is interested in the type of reasoning you use when you form your beliefs, and concerns itself with whether you have good reasons to believe what you believe. Therefore, this class isn’t a class on the psychology of reasoning, which brings us to the second important feature of critical thinking.

B. Ought N ot Is ( or Normative N ot Descriptive )

There is a difference between normative and descriptive theories. Descriptive theories, such as those provided by physics, provide a picture of how the world factually behaves and operates. In contrast, normative theories, such as those provided by ethics or political philosophy, provide a picture of how the world should be. Rather than ask question such as why something is the way it is, normative theories ask how something should be. In this course, we will be interested in normative theories that govern our thinking and reasoning. Therefore, we will not be interested in how we actually reason, but rather focus on how we ought to reason.

In the introduction to this course we considered a selection task with cards that must be flipped in order to check the validity of a rule. We noted that many people fail to identify all the cards required to check the rule. This is how people do in fact reason (descriptive). We then noted that you must flip over two cards. This is how people ought to reason (normative).

• Section I-IV are taken from http://philosophy.hku.hk/think/ and are in use under the creative commons license. Some modifications have been made to the original content. ↵

Critical Thinking Copyright © 2019 by Brian Kim is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License , except where otherwise noted.

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Global history is not just significant events on a timeline, it is also the ordinary, mundane moments that people experience in between. Graphic novels can capture this multidimensionality in ways that are difficult, and sometimes impossible, in more traditional media formats, says Stanford history professor Tom Mullaney .

Tom Mullaney, a professor of history in the School of Humanities and Sciences, uses graphic novels in his teachings to help students appreciate different experiences and perspectives throughout history. (Image credit: Ilmiyah Achmad)

Mullaney has incorporated graphic novels in some of his Stanford courses since 2017; in 2020, he taught a course dedicated to the study of world history through comic strip formats.

While graphic novels are not a substitute for academic literature, he said he finds them a useful teaching and research tool. They not only portray the impact of historic events on everyday lives, but because they can be read in one or two sittings, they get to it at a much faster rate than say a 10,000 word essay or autobiography could.

“It accelerates the process of getting to subtlety,” said Mullaney, a professor of history at Stanford’s School of Humanities and Sciences . “There’s just so much you can do, and so many questions you can ask, and so many perspective shifts you can carry out – like that! You can just do it – you show them something, they read it and BOOM! It’s like an accelerant. It’s awesome.”

For example, in Thi Bui’s graphic novel The Best We Could Do , themes of displacement and diaspora emerge as she talks about her family’s escape from war-torn Vietnam to the United States. The illustrated memoir shows Bui’s upbringing in suburban California and the complicated memories her parents carry with them as they move about their new life in America. In other chapters, she depicts her mother and father back in Vietnam and what their own childhood was like amidst the country’s upheaval.

Graphic novels like The Best We Could Do and also Maus , Art Spiegelman’s seminal portrayal of his Jewish family’s experience during the Holocaust, illustrate the challenges and subtleties of memory – particularly family memory – and the entanglements that arise when narrating history, Mullaney said.

Graphic novels prime readers for the complexity of doing and reading historical research and how there is no simplistic, narrative arc of history. “When I read a graphic novel, I feel prepared to ask questions that allow me to go into the harder core, peer-reviewed material,” Mullaney said.

The everyday moments that graphic novels are exceptionally good at capturing also raise questions in the reader’s mind, Mullaney said. Readers sit in the family living room and at the kitchen table with Spiegelman and Bui and follow along as their characters try to understand what their parent’s generation went through and discover it’s not always easy to grasp. “Not everything mom and dad say makes sense,” said Mullaney.

These seemingly mundane moments also present powerful opportunities for inquiry. “The ordinary  is where the explanation lives and where you can start asking questions,” Mullaney added.

Graphic novels can also depict how in periods of war and conflict, violence can become part of everyday existence and survival. The simplicity of the format allows heavy, painful experiences to emerge from a panel untethered and unweighted from lengthy descriptions or dramatizations.

“They’re banal. They’re not dramatic. There are no strings attached. In a work of nonfiction, in an article or book, it would be almost impossible to do that. There would have to be so much expository writing and so much description that you would lose the horror of it,” Mullaney said.

A ‘fundamental misunderstanding’

Graphic novels like Maus and The Best We Could Do were included in Mullaney’s 2020 Stanford class, Global History Through Graphic Novels .

In 2020, Tom Mullaney, a professor of history, taught Global History Through Graphic Novels , a course that paired graphic novels such as Art Spiegelman’s Maus with archival materials and historical essays to examine modern world history from the 18th to the 21st century. He created a poster for the class, as shown here. (Image credit: Tom Mullaney)

In the course, Mullaney paired graphic novels with archival materials and historical essays to examine modern world history from the 18th to the 21st century.

The course syllabus also included the graphic novels Showa , Shigeru Mizuki ’s manga series about growing up in Japan before World War II, and Such a Lovely Little War , about Marcelino Truong’s experience as a child in Saigon during the Vietnam War.

Most recently, Mullaney has offered to teach a variation of the Stanford course to the public, free for high school and college students , this summer.

Registration for the online course opened shortly after news emerged and made international headlines that Maus was banned by a Tennessee school board for its depiction of nudity and use of swear words.

Within two days of Mullaney’s course registration opening, over 200 students from across the world signed up.

Mullaney believes that there is a “fundamental misunderstanding” about what young people can process when it comes to negotiating complex themes and topics – whether it is structural racism or the Holocaust. They just need some guidance, which he hopes as a teacher, he can provide.

“I think students of high school age or even younger, if they have the scaffolding they need – which is the job of educators to give them – they can handle the structural inequalities, darknesses and horrors of life,” he said.

Mullaney noted that many teenagers are already exposed to many of these difficult issues through popular media. “But they’re just doing it on their own and figuring it out for themselves – that’s not a good idea,” he said.

Mullaney said he hopes he can teach Global History Through Graphic Novels to Stanford students again this fall.

For Stanford scholars interested in learning more about the intersection of graphic novels and scholarship, there is a newly established working group through the Division of Literatures, Cultures and Languages, Comics, More than Words .

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The Many Benefits of Studying Psychology

How and why an understanding of psychology can be essential for anyone..

Posted May 18, 2024 | Reviewed by Ray Parker

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• Understanding the scientific method helps to make more informed decisions.
• Studying psychology helps better understand relationships in the home and at work.
• Contrary to popular belief, psychology can be a very employable college degree.

Even though psychology is one of the most popular undergraduate majors, many people question the benefits of a psychology degree. This is partially due to the fact that a career in the field of psychology typically requires a graduate degree. Yet, I am going to argue that there are many benefits to studying psychology that are beyond simply finding a rewarding career. Here are several:

A Good Understanding of the Scientific Method

Psychology provides a good grounding in the scientific method. Being a social science, psychology teaches us that rather than operating on our hunches or our own biased experiences, it is important to look for objective evidence to gain a better understanding. Psychology students learn that science strives to make informed decisions but also acknowledges that science is not “black and white” thinking. The scientific method relies on the ”best possible evidence,” meaning that as new evidence is gathered, conclusions may change.

We saw this at play during the COVID-19 pandemic and vaccine skepticism. Rather than relying on the best possible evidence of the vaccine’s effectiveness in preventing serious illness and death, skeptics relied more on biased information from uninformed sources or from their own observed (non-scientific) experiences.

Critical Thinking

A great deal of psychological content, and the methods taught and used by psychologists, focus on how to think critically. Critical thinking is considered to be essential to being an educated person. These critical thinking skills can benefit a variety of careers in business, law, and other professions.

Understanding of Relationships and Psychological Well-Being

Although studying psychology doesn’t necessarily make you psychologically healthier any more than studying medicine makes you physically healthy, psychology majors do have this knowledge at their fingertips and should be more aware of the fact that good interpersonal and family relationships require attention and hard work. Psychology also tells us that when we are having difficulties in relationships or in coping with life, it is important to seek out professional help and counseling.

A Better Understanding of Workplace Dynamics

Studying psychology, particularly the area of industrial/organizational psychology provides insights into the world of work. Knowledge of psychology can lead to improved work relationships, and it can benefit professionally, as well. A knowledge of human behavior is one of the "selling points" for psych majors when it comes to gaining employment, and a knowledge of basic psychology makes you a more effective supervisor/manager

Improved Employability

Contrary to popular belief, psychology is a very good general major for careers in law, social services, education , business, and many other occupations. The trick is knowing how to “sell” your psychology degree and background to a potential employer (the employer may hold to stereotypes that psychology is an "empty" major without real skills). However, savvy employers (and savvy job applicants) know that an understanding of human behavior is essential to success in the workplace.

Ronald E. Riggio, Ph.D. , is the Henry R. Kravis Professor of Leadership and Organizational Psychology at Claremont McKenna College.

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Why in-person friendships are better for health than virtual pals

María Branyas, who, at 117, is the oldest known living person on Earth, believes that one of the secrets to a long and healthy life lies in having “a good connection with friends and family.”

A growing body of research shows the “supercentenarian” might be onto something. It’s long been known that people who enjoy high-quality friendships have better health — the effect is so strong it’s comparable to the longevity benefit of eating a Mediterranean diet .

But simply having good friends and feeling connected isn’t enough. Research suggests that for our health to truly thrive, we need to physically meet with our friends on a regular basis.

A recent study analyzed data from nearly 13,000 volunteers, examining not only their number of friends, but also whether they saw each other. Having face-to-face contact with friends at least once per week was a strong predictor of better physical and mental health. Calling or texting didn’t bring similar benefits, says Eric Kim, professor of psychology at the University of British Columbia and the study’s lead author.

Data collected from a gerontological study in Japan showed that men who spent little time with their friends — less than a few times per year — had a 30 percent higher mortality risk than those who enjoyed more frequent contact.

While these studies show only an association — it could be that healthy people have more energy to spend time with friends — researchers believe the relationship between in-person friendships and better health is worth thinking about. The findings come as more people increasingly opt out of traditional, in-person socializing. According to data from the American Time Use Survey, the average time spent with friends decreased from 60 minutes per day in 2003 to a mere 34 minutes in 2019.

“In the U.S., there’s a friendship recession,” Kim says.

Why in-person friendships are good for you

Humans are social animals, and being surrounded by friendly others lowers our risk of coronary heart disease, stroke , type 2 diabetes , Alzheimer’s disease , even cancer . “Pretty much any way you cut it, any way you measure it, being more socially connected is associated with better health,” says Julianne Holt-Lunstad , a neuroscientist at Brigham Young University.

One reason friendship is so vital for health is rather straightforward. Friends, Kim says, are “checking up on people and encouraging people to exercise or eat healthy.” They can also, he says, provide important information, such as “where can I get a flu shot?”

Studies have found that people who are socially isolated produce more cortisol throughout the day, which has been associated with cardiovascular disease and a higher overall mortality risk . “We are social species, we’re just primed to connect to others,” says Oliver Huxhold , developmental psychologist at the German Centre of Gerontology.

Your nose knows friendship

The benefits of face-to-face interactions may be related to smell. When our noses pick up the body odor of other people, for example, we tend to pick up their emotions , too: from anxiety and fear to happiness.

In one experiment , researchers applied electrodes to the faces of volunteers and asked them to sniff samples of sweat of people who had previously watched either happy videos (“The Jungle Book”) or neutral videos (the weather forecast.) After inhaling the body odor of cheerful people, the volunteers’ facial muscles twitched in a way that suggested they felt happier, too.

Communication via body odor happens mostly on a subconscious level, and as such it may be sometime more honest than words, says Jasper de Groot, behavioral scientist at Radboud University in the Netherlands and the study’s author. “It may help you empathize with the other person,” he says.

This role of scents in feeling the emotions of others, he says, may help explain why people with more sensitive noses tend to have larger circles of friends and suffer less loneliness — both important predictors of health and longevity . For one study , researchers tested volunteers’ sense of smell with the “Sniffin’ Sticks” test. Using a set of penlike tubes containing various aromas and typically used for olfactory testing, they found that those who had the most sensitive noses also had larger social networks. Brain scans of the volunteers also suggested a link between olfactory sensitivity and social network size.

Smelling the body odor of a loved one can help reduce stress. When European researchers submitted a group of volunteers to weak electric shocks , those who could sniff T-shirts previously worn by their romantic partners stayed calmer — this was reflected by their skin’s electrical conductivity, an indicator of stress. We also sleep better when we can take a whiff of a friendly body odor: Simply putting a partner’s used shirt under the pillow causes people to have more restful sleep , an effect comparable to popping a melatonin pill, de Groot says.

Seeing and touching friends makes a difference

When we spend time with friends and relatives face-to-face, we may get on the same brain wave — literally. According to a 2023 study , as soon as we look each other in the eyes, the neural activity in our brains may become synchronized: On an electroencephalography reading of two synchronized brains, the lines representing each person’s neural activity fluctuate up and down together. Such neural synchrony has been linked with more kindness toward others , better communication and cooperation . However, if we text or chat over video , neural synchrony between our brains almost disappears.

A 2024 review found that holding hands, hugs and other friendly skin-to-skin contact can also help us sleep better, as well as reduce stress. A daily dose of hugs improves the functioning of the hypothalamic pituitary adrenal axis , the stress pathway. It also lowers the levels of proinflammatory cytokines , molecules involved in the development of diabetes and heart disease . Friendly touch can be a powerful painkiller, too. C-tactile fibers, a type of nerve fibers in human skin, respond to slow, stroking touches by sending signals to the brain that reduce the feelings of pain. Such effects have been found for both painful medical procedures and chronic diseases, such as Parkinson’s disease . The relief, research shows, is immediate .

Face-to-face interactions may also influence immune health. One study conducted during the coronavirus pandemic, and based on an analysis of blood samples from 142 adults, revealed that meeting friends in person improves the functioning of genes linked to the immune system. Such benefits, however, didn’t materialize for those who only interacted with their friends online.

And while texting our friends or sending them Snapchat photos is certainly one way to keep the relationship going, for a deep connection we need more than seeing a friend’s two-dimensional image on a screen. You also need other senses, like smell, de Groot says, even if you don’t realize it. “It makes all the difference,” de Groot says.

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So, you want to grow hair.

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If you want to make a lot of money, all you have to do is come up with an effective treatment for androgenic alopecia. That’s male pattern baldness. Actually, even a minimally effective product will do. Or one that has no efficacy at all, like a shampoo that claims to “unclog the scalp by cleaning follicles,” or a brush that “stimulates hair growth.” That’s because hair loss is so distressing, and so damaging to self-esteem, that many men are willing to plunk down money for anything that hints at regrowth, be it a drug, some “natural” concoction, or a cap that delivers “low level laser light therapy" (LLLT).

There is no single cause for hair loss. Genetics, nutritional deficiencies, hormonal changes, certain medical conditions and stress all play possible roles. The best studied influencer has been dihydrotestosterone (DHT), a hormone that causes hair follicles, the shafts in the skin from which hair grows, to shrink. This results in thinner hairs and eventually no hairs being produced. Since dihydrotestosterone forms from testosterone through the activity of the enzyme alpha-reductase, inhibiting this enzyme can prevent hair loss. Finasteride (Propecia) is an oral medication that interferes with the activity of this enzyme and leads to modest regrowth. It certainly cannot be used by women of child bearing age because finasteride can cause fetal abnormalities and it hasn’t been studied in post-menopausal women.

The cells that make up the hair follicle need the appropriate raw materials, namely amino acids, vitamins and minerals, to produce keratin, the protein that is the basic component of hair. These are delivered through the bloodstream so that any increased circulation through the scalp benefits hair growth. Minoxidil (Rogaine) is a topical medication that widens blood vessels and increases nutrient and oxygen delivery. This causes follicles that are in the telogen phase, the resting phase of the hair growth cycle, to revert to anagen, the active growing phase. Minoxidil can be used by men or women and is most effective at the first sign of hair loss. In rare cases, hair loss is due to a nutrient deficient diet, particularly one that lacks biotin, a B vitamin. In this case a biotin supplement can help.

A number of “natural” oral supplements have also appeared on the market with Nutrafol, Viviscal and Replenology being widely promoted. Each one of these contains a plethora of ingredients that are said to have been selected based on scientific evidence for supporting hair growth. Since these supplements are regulated as “natural health products,” there is no requirement to provide any evidence of efficacy.

Reprenology, for example, is a system that combines an oral supplement, a shampoo, a conditioner and a “follicle serum.” The capsule alone contains 28 ingredients! What are they? Vitamins, minerals and a host of plant extracts in unknown amounts. I don’t know what  Malus domestica , which is the common apple, has to do with hair growth, but  Moringa oleifera , the “drumstick tree,” has some anti-alpha reductase activity.  Eclipta prostrata , also known as “false daisy,” can supposedly stimulate anagen. These ingredients are also present in the “follicle serum,” although instead of  Malus domestica , we have  Pyrus malus , which is crabapple. I’m not just being crabby when I say there is no evidence for this, but there isn’t any. Caffeine is also included for some unknown reason.

Curiously, Reprenology contains no saw palmetto which is known to be an alpha reductase inhibitor. However, it is present in Nutrafol, which has a different grab bag of ingredients that include curcumin, ashwagandha and hydrolyzed marine collagen along with an array of vitamins and minerals. Then there is Viviscal, which for some reason specifically targets women with its “proprietary blend of shark and mullusk powder, organic silica, microcrystalline cellulose, magnesium citrate, hypromellose and glycerol.

Putting aside the questionable science behind assembling the cacophony of ingredients found in these natural products, the question we are interested in is whether the products can actually grow hair. Well, they can. Just not very much of it in most cases. There actually are some double-blind clinical trials that definitely document growth, but the problem is that the documentation is generally expressed in terms of hairs per square centimeter. It is difficult to know how that translates to a practical effect. An increase of 20 hairs per square centimeter may be statistically significant, but does it mean that an observer will take notice? Without proper statistics of user satisfaction backed up by photos, we just don’t know. Results with all these hair growth products seem to be very variable, so the only way to find out if one works is to open your wallet and give it a try. And get ready to open that wallet quite wide. Although not as wide as for a cap that targets the scalp with red light emitted at a wavelength of 655 nanometers that supposedly increases circulation in the scalp. Here we are talking over a thousand dollars for a hat that has to be worn for about half an hour a day for months. Again, there is evidence for some growth, but to variable extents. However, if you really want to be noticed as sporting new hair, transplants have improved significantly. And of course, there are wigs. They unquestionably work.

@JoeSchwarcz

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