Educational professionals are not ordinary everyday critics using experiential expertise to comment on practice. Instead, they are critical researchers who are concerned with debates about the purposes of education, social justice and equity, and how research is vital to understanding and explaining change. Using the reflexive views of six educational professionals interplayed with my own research career I examine what this means in reality, and I consider how and why such critical research is subject to criticism, but how doctoral studies not only confront this but also develop significant ways of thinking and doing as professionals.