Android Studio Extracting : I am a real newbie so go easy on me and my terminology, I am still learning!

I have a Backendless database I would like to show in my app.

I have successfully connected it to my Android Studio app, queried it and returned the data in the following method: 

Backendless.Data.of( "database" ).find( queryBuilder, new AsyncCallback<List<Map>>(){public void handleResponse(List'<'Map'>'response ){

The narrative on the Backendless SDK says *"the "response" object is a collection of java.util.Map objects"*

I then used an iterator:
Iterator itr = response.iterator();

And a while loop to 'get' the object:
Object element = itr.next();

I am happy up until this point, the next step is to extract the useful data from element. 

I have tried many options of but the only one I have working is element.toString() and use various methods to pick out what I want. This seems so inefficient I thought I would ask the experts for a better option!?

Thanks in advance for your help.
