Becoming a Faithful Academic: a Place for Latter-day Saint Pedagogy in Composition and Rhetoric

Abstract

This thesis begins as a creative non-fiction essay about the author's experiences in graduate-level English as a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, and the struggles he faced to reconcile the theories of knowledge he was learning as a student with the seemingly contradictory truths he knew as a person of faith. The author found that the key to becoming a faithful academic, and his key to formulating his own pedagogy, was in the role the body plays in cognition as found in the works of Byron Hawk and Alex Reid. The author outlines what he believes to be a Latter-day Saint Pedagogy and the doctrines of the LDS Church from which this pedagogy emanates. He then compares it to contemporary pedagogical theories using James Berlin's cartographies and explains LDS pedagogy's connection to Byron Hawk's Complex Vitalism. Finally, the author connects the idea of "new ethos" from New Literacy Studies to the humility a teacher might feel as he or she recognizes the distributed quality of knowledge creation. Progressive pedagogical methods can be separated from progressive politics, and pedagogy must be focused on the local moment of learning and must include the bodily feelings of the students. However, teachers must be humble and be willing to relinquish some of the control of their classroom to the students or else they will not be student-centered, even though they are using what appear to be student-centered pedagogical practices.