Date: Friday, October 4, 2024
Time: 4:00 PM
Location: Harkness Chapel, Classroom
Free – open to the public
Our weekly Friday afternoon colloquia feature current research presentations by distinguished visiting scholars, as well as by our own faculty and graduate students in musicology, historical performance practice, and music education.
Following each session, receptions offer a valuable opportunity for social interaction, helping to foster a strong sense of community, camaraderie, and mutual support within the department.
About the Talk
"Finding Yourself in Your Research: On Bias and Subjectivity in Research Methods"
Termed “the paradigm wars” (West, 2018), researchers in the arts have separated into two camps on the role of bias within the research process. Some argue that the explicitness of a researcher’s values sully the quality of work, while others suggest that objectivity is elusive, in that one’s research is inherently limited by the narrow directionality of their gaze. I aim to showcase the ways in which the two sides of this binary are one and the same. Borrowing from the work of Dahlberg & Dahlberg (2004) and Pinar (1975, 1994), I suggest that acknowledging and accepting subjectivities can enhance both the quality of research and the researcher’s acumen. Through examples from my own research, I will focus on how post-modern and pluralistic research methods can make research anew. By examining the way we understand ourselves in relation to the topics we study, we can find expansive perspectives of data analysis and increase the richness of a study’s findings.
About the Speaker
Dr. George Nicholson previously served as a Lecturer of String Music Education at Case Western Reserve University, where he taught conducting, curriculum and assessment, and instrumental methods, and led the Camerata Chamber Orchestra. He now holds a position at Teachers College, Columbia University. Dr. Nicholson earned his bachelor’s degree from the University of Miami, a master’s from the University of Georgia, and a Doctor of Education in Music & Music Education from Teachers College, Columbia University, where he was a Florence K. Geffen Fellow under Dr. Randall E. Allsup. He began his career teaching orchestra in Cobb County, Georgia, leading award-winning programs, and later transitioned to music teacher education with positions at the University of New Mexico and Ithaca College. He remains active in K-12 music through various conducting roles and performs on bass with the Queer Urban Orchestra of New York City. His research focuses on the relationship between educational philosophies and pedagogical practice, with a particular interest in multi-style string pedagogy; his work has been published in leading journals, and he has presented at numerous national and international conferences.
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