Engaging in Feedback Dialogues for Liberation

Feedback is often positioned as a tool for effectiveness, productivity, improvement, which denote a certain performative culture and which can be experienced as monological and judgement. Yet feedback should be first and foremost an opportunity for authentic dialogue, for people of all contexts to encounter suggestions, questions, words of advice and wisdom and sometimes dissonances. These conversations, when embedded in brave spaces, can be liberating and emancipatory.

Drawing from Paulo Freire's dialogic attributes, this course explores the potential of relational feedback encounters grounded in pedagogy of liberation. It will support people in encountering the tension between suggestion and accountability.

Drawing on doctoral research into student (dis)engagement with feedback, the course offers a nuanced exploration of why people sometimes ignore, resist, or emotionally disengage from the very feedback intended to support them. Rather than treating feedback as a technical instrument (a set of comments to improve performance), we examine it as a relational encounter.

Feedback is not simply transmitted; it is received, interpreted, felt, negotiated, and often transformed. When framed as a dialogical experience, feedback becomes a site of meaning-making shaped by emotion, identity, power, and context. This shift opens possibilities for deeper engagement and more sustainable practices.

Participants will explore the conditions that must exist before feedback can be taken up. Because feedback must first be received (cognitively and emotionally) attention will be given to climate-building practices that foster a sense of mattering. Practical moves will be shared for supporting individuals who may be particularly sensitive to perceived criticism, including neurodivergent people with rejection sensitivity.

We will investigate multiple forms of feedback dialogue: inner feedback, peer feedback, and 'expert' feedback.

Additionally, we will surface often-invisible dynamics that shape engagement. Power asymmetries between people can influence whether feedback is welcomed, negotiated, or rejected. By making these dynamics visible, we can better design feedback interactions that invite participation rather than compliance.

Throughout the course, participants will engage with tools, embodied teaching practices, and reflective activities designed to strengthen relationality in feedback interactions.

This workshop ultimately invites all of us to rethink feedback not as a technique to perfect, but as a relational and reflexive posture.

Educators, artists, leaders, partners, and community organizers.