This article adds to previous literature on writing “wayfinding” by examining how a writer’s religious beliefs and commitments shape their rhetorical choices and influence their writing wayfinding. The 5-year longitudinal study we report here used discourse-based interviews to understand the experiences of student writers who are members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Examining texts our study participants wrote in and outside of college classrooms, our analysis highlights moments when they used emotion and affect as rhetorical strategies to accomplish instrumental and relational goals. We found that in these moments, participants’ commitments as Latter-day Saints and their related identities significantly affected their writing decisions and their sense of wayfinding, particularly as they navigated writing contexts outside of familiar academic settings. The article suggests that understanding the challenges and opportunities writers face in the intersections between their rhetorical choices and their commitments as members of an organized church can help writing teachers better support students' writing development.

Research on writing pedagogy education (WPE) emphasizes the importance of engaging graduate student instructors (GSIs) in mindful reflection about their own practices and about composition theory. Little research, however, has explored what we learn from a systematic, empirical investigation of GSIs’ reflective writing. In this article, we describe a writing assignment we created for a graduate composition theory course that required GSIs to connect their own beliefs and experiences with the theory they read. We analyzed 60 essays to learn how new writing teachers understand and use composition theory. Our analysis shows that GSIs rely on three discursive patterns to write about theory (we call these cite-comment , cite-apply , cite-engage ) and adopt three orientations towards theory (using theory to explain prior beliefs and maintain a teacherly identity , to solve classroom problems and shore up a teacherly identity , and to accept uncertainty and become a reflective teacher ). We discuss connections between GSIs’ discursive strategies and their theoretical orientations. We conclude by sharing how we have revised both this assignment and our training program to help GSIs better engage theory as they reflect on their own experiences. Finally, we explore the implications of what we learned for WPE broadly.

Based on an IRB-approved study, this article shows how understanding students’ lived and experienced curriculum can help first-year-writing teachers support the high-school-to-college transition.

This article reports on an IRB-approved study conducted in a college preparation writing workshop. Using affect theory as a framework for exploring participants’ writing experiences, I theorize the phenomenon of affective rupture, a tension between the affect students experience while writing in school and their belief in the value of school-based writing. I describe three patterns of behavior students use to respond to affective rupture: downplaying their own ability or capacity, willing themselves to write, or becoming apathetic about writing. While these patterns are likely familiar to composition teachers, there has been little research exploring their affective roots. I also identify a fourth response that temporarily interrupts students’ negative affective trajectories. I provide a theoretical and practical understanding of this productive response, which I call hope. I conclude by suggesting how teachers might encourage and sustain hope.

Composition theory and pedagogy have variously understood writing as a noun or as a verb, a product or a process. This paper proposes a shift to theorizing writing as a gerund (writing g. ) and argues that this approach opens a space for more productive composition theory. A gerund orientation focuses attention on the virtual and affective qualities of the writing experience—what writing does to and with a writer. The study of writing g., or what this paper calls composition experience scholarship , frees composition scholarship from a pedagogic imperative while at the same time producing theory that has practical application.