What do you do if your teaching methods are challenged by feedback?

Because there is often a misunderstanding about Feedback, I want to start with a small definition: The concept of feedback, initially from technology, now applies broadly to human interaction, often misinterpreted. True feedback avoids judging actions or individuals, preventing negative impacts on relationships, as Goffman suggests. Rosenberg's Nonviolent Communication sees all evaluations, even positive, as potentially harmful, equating praise with criticism. This is pertinent in education, where teachers balance guiding and evaluating students, complicating genuine feedback. Distinctions between evaluative and constructive feedback are crucial, especially among peers, demanding diplomatic skill and strong relationships.

In all situations, it is good to listen to understand as opposed to listening to respond. If II am going to get a hand on the situation, I need to truly listen and understand what the problem is.

If you ask for feedback, you also have to be open to it - even if it criticizes you and your methods. Often students have pretty genuine approaches on how things can be improved. Try to take feedback serious and implement it into your ways of teaching. If something might not seem clear, try to get a deeper understanding of the suggestions. Implementing the feedback will help you grow.

When listening to understand, I will need to ask questions. If it truly doesn't make sense as to what they are saying, instead of telling them that, ask to clarify all points and everything needed to further discuss.

If you are not looking at your teaching methods every year, semester, month, week, day, hour, minute, second, then you aren't preparing yourself. Take these criticisms and overlap them with your methods and compare and contrast.

Where there are contrasts in your methods, look and see if any of the contrasts have more evidence based and peer reviewed studies over the other.

Implement changes to your style of teaching as well as your materials step-by-step. Start with the biggest pain points of your students and try to improve those parts. Evaluate them with students and gather feedback again. If that worked, go on with the next step. With this method you will grow incrementally but steadily.

When you see the changes necessary, don't make an overhaul of how you do things. Simply polish, practice, and make permanent in your work.

After you have implemented the feedback that you received, try to evaluate if you did it right. If you did, you should be able to notice. If you implemented your students' feedback the right way, coming classes will typically understand faster, easier, and ask more detailed / complex questions.