Embracing Our Contexts: Fostering a Critical Friendship through Conversations on Parenting and Career Trajectories in Tertiary Education

Abstract

This chapter explores the implementation of a critical friendship between two female university language educators based in Japan. It will examine a series of critical reflective dialogues on gender, motherhood, and career trajectories in tertiary education. By using a variety of scholarly research articles as a starting point, both participants reflected on a range of issues including, gender, feminism, race, and intersectionality as it pertains to the lives of foreign working women in academia in Japan. Further, this research intersects with discussions of labor policy as it affects workers in Japanese tertiary education. Over one academic semester we met for a series of five online Zoom sessions to analyze and discuss a recent academic publication. We each prepared a pre-session written summary of the reading and a set of questions to facilitate the discussion. After completing the sessions, we analyzed the written data and reflected on a set of three themes. This holistic process of engaging in reflective practice as critical friends deepened our working relationship and enhanced our professional development. It is our hope that by documenting the process and sharing our experiences, we will encourage others to actively engage in scholarly reading and critical reflective dialogue to develop their own critical friendships.