The use of software ATLAS.ti and narratives in mapping the mentorship processes developed in an online training

Abstract

The mentorship is a type of continuing education that is developed through school-centred processes involving an experienced teacher and a beginner teacher. Our objective is to present the contributions of the use of ATLAS.ti Software and the analysis of narratives produced by mentors teachers to highlight the mapping of mentoring processes performed by these individuals. We have collected data from 10 activities drawn up and posted in the VLE tools by the 4 participants selected, as main source of data and analysis content. The contents of these activities are understood, in this study as narratives. Narratives were transformed into Portable Document Format (PDF) files and imported through ATLAS.ti software (version 7.0), totalling 24 primary documents (PDs) which have composed the Hermeneutic Unit of the analysis project. During data treatment, in the stage corresponding to categorization of analysis’ content, the narratives were coded, taking into consideration the methodological contribution on content analysis. The codification corresponds to a transformation (following specific rules) of raw qualitative data of the text. This transformation is what allows to reach a content representation, or the expression of its characteristics. In addition to the use of narratives in the qualitative investigative process, the ATLAS.ti has proved to be a software that potentiates the process of organizing a large amount of data, assisting in coding and decoding the analysis data. It also contributed significantly in the methodological conduction of a qualitative research of this size.