Abstract of

Mentoring and Reporting Research: A Concern for Aesthetics

Donna E. Alvermann

George G. Hruby

In this article we present the results of two studies on the mentoring of teacher educators in literacy education, and model alternative ways of representing and evaluating research data. The first study is based on a survey of North American teacher educators and their beliefs about how they were mentored as students and how they in turn mentor their graduate advisees. The data from this first study are presented as a traditional quantitative analysis. The second study is a report of six site visits to institutional locations across North America where in-depth interviews were conducted with seven professors of literacy teacher education and their current advisees. In keeping with the interpretive practices of one such professor whose site visit we selected to illustrate these practices, the write-up of said location is crafted as an aesthetic narrative. Our method of writing over one another's site visit data is also illustrated. We close by articulating how these alternative forms of representing data capture the aesthetics of mentoring graduate students in literacy teacher education. In the spirit of modeling these new forms, we structure the paper as a whole with the trope of the triptych, a presentational art form adapted from a previous millennium that takes the form of three illustrative panels hinged together to tell a story. In our triptych, the first panel is the quantitative survey study, the second panel our qualitative site visits, and the third our interpretive rationale for attending to aesthetics in reporting research on mentoring in literacy teacher education. Explanatory hinges hold the text together and facilitate the transition between panels.

Abstract from Alvermann, D.E., & Hruby, G.G. (2000). Mentoring and Reporting Research: A Concern for Aesthetics. Reading Research Quarterly, 35(1), 46–63. doi: 10.1598/RRQ.35.1.4