While the Seminaries and Institutes of Religion (S&I) of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints expect supervisors of teachers to observe teachers regularly and provide feedback, they have not provided those supervisors with adequate training materials, or explained how these supervisors are expected to accomplish this. For this study, three administrators and three teachers were interviewed about their experiences with observation and feedback in S&I. Their responses provided clarification on the purposes of observation and feedback, revealed that a lack of supervisor training has resulted in teachers’ experiences with observation and feedback being different from administrator’s expectations in key ways, and identified some elements of observation and feedback that teachers and administrators agree are effective. Those elements include teachers’ autonomy, collaboration between supervisors, frequent observations designed to help teachers improve (rather than to judge teachers’ abilities), and providing feedback in a kind and constructive way, limiting suggestions for improve to one or two things that are based on principles for teaching that are widely-accepted throughout S&I. This study also reports how teachers and administrators might feel about the use of a standard observation form for teacher observation and feedback.

This thesis operates under the assumption that the earliest form of mass communication is the religious sermon as recorded in the Bible. This thesis looks to Bormann, who used a sacred to secular approach and found similarities between Puritan sermons and the rhetoric of political speeches. This research reverses that order and moves from secular to sacred by looking first at well-known American speeches and then at landmark addresses to Seminary and Institutes of Religion teachers of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints—and specifically at Clark's The Charted Course of the Church in Education. This single sermon, delivered in 1938, continues to shape the Seminary and Institutes program after more than seven decades. With the opening of the first LDS Seminary in 1912, the foundations of the program were laid. Yet, each generation seemed to drift away from those foundations enough that a realignment was needed. In 1938, the constitution of Church education was given in the form of the Charted Course and it has served as the realigning document ever since. Subsequent realignments occurred in 1954, and 1963. Since 1976, the Charted Course has been referenced regularly, particularly during the annual Evening with a General Authority address to Seminary and Institute teachers and, consequently, since that time, no great drift has occurred that required another major realignment. Instead, the Charted Course is now used consistently to prevent drift, not only to correct it.

An organization’s leadership theory acts as a collection of primary guiding characteristics which influence its identity and direction. Developing leaders has always been important for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Historically, the Church has promoted leadership ideals for all its members through various aspects of its doctrine and organization. This study provides an analysis of multiple leadership texts produced by the ecclesiastical and educational wings of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. The study helps to reveal how Latter-day Saint leadership theory has developed over time. This study considers the unfolding of Latter-day Saint leadership theory from 1900 to 2017. The analysis provides greater understanding of how ecclesiastic leadership theory relates to leadership theory provided for the Church’s religious educators. Additionally, this study considers how themes in Latter-day leadership theory developed in relationship to other contemporary historical and theoretical trends. Data derived from this analysis are used to answer the following three questions: (1) How has the idea of leadership changed over time in The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and in its educational system? (2) What are the enduring themes and distinctive concepts of Latter-day Saint leadership theory? (3) What differences exist between the leadership constructs provided for ecclesiastical leaders in The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and those of its educational system?

Education and learning have ever been at the core of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Throughout its history that now extends nearly one hundred ninety years, the Church has made numerous attempts to provide educational opportunities for its members. Some attempts have failed, and others were met with some success—though limited, to be sure. In hindsight, most of these efforts were simply laying the foundation for something far greater. At the dawn of the twenty-first century, the groundwork for global Church education had been laid, and the seeds planted. Beginning with a pilot administered through BYU-Idaho, a program known as “Pathway” grew into a worldwide effort that is successfully providing educational opportunities to individuals distanced from such occasion. The Church-affiliated university also created a robust online program, that coupled with Pathway, was providing a largely affordable, yet high-quality education to Church members and even a few other individuals across the globe. Not without its barriers, Pathway and the BYU-Idaho online degree program worked to overcome legal and other limitations in order to create and expand a vigorous offering across cultures, time, and space. Recently, these programs have given root to what is now a global education initiative, collaborating a united effort from each institution affiliated with the Church Educational System.

This qualitative study aimed at exploring and explaining the practices and processes of teacher reflection among a group of professional secondary-level religious educators in the Church Educational System of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, as well as seeking to understand the perceived impact of those reflective practices on the professional development of these teachers. The researcher described, analyzed, and interpreted the data to develop a mid-range grounded theory for explaining the process of teacher reflection in a way that could lead to the improvement of teacher reflection among these teachers as an integrated function of professional development. This study found that the institutional operational tools for reflection provided means for professional religious educators to engage in various kinds of reflection, but that the relationship between the various levels of reflection and the way these functioned in their professional development was not well understood or utilized by these teachers. This study concluded by offering an integrated model of teacher reflection that can help teachers and supervisors understand the process of reflection as an integral part of the teacher's professional development.

Many practitioners commonly deal with implementing a change that is imposed by an organization. Some imposed changes require practitioners to alter more than what they do in practice but also to change their identity. Many researchers have studied identity change through the lens of sociocultural theory, specifically utilizing communities of practice theory (CoP). However, the majority of these studies used CoP theory as a vehicle to implement the imposed change. Yet some studies have found that after the trial period ends many practitioners revert back to the way they performed in practice prior to the study. One reason for this problem could be that the nature of the change experience that practitioners must undergo is not understood. The purpose of this phenomenological study was to reveal the nature of the change experience of six released-time seminary teachers in response to the adoption of the teaching and learning emphasis (TLE) within the Seminaries and Institutes of Religion (S&I) for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Specifically, the research question was "What is the nature and meaning of the change experience of a sample of released-time seminary teachers who are considered to be effective at learning to understand and implement TLE"? Researching S&I teachers' change experience is important because it may relate not only to the needs of the S&I organization, but also in a broader sense to the nature of the experience of practitioners who undergo an imposed change by the organization for which they work that alters their professional identity. Three central themes were found that represented the nature of the change experience for the sample group. The themes were represented as transformational, sociocultural, and self-reflective change. Each participant's experience varied in the particular details of his individual change experience. Nevertheless, all participants experienced some degree or kind of transformational change within their particular configuration of knowledge, character, and professional practice. Furthermore, all study participants engaged in sociocultural learning practices to facilitate their change. Finally, study participants experienced self-reflective changes.

The purpose of this study is to document the history and the contributing factors that led to the formation of the Current Teaching Emphasis (2003), the Objective (2009), and the Gospel Teaching and Learning Handbook (2012) within Seminaries and Institutes of Religion (S&I) for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. The analysis of this history, contained herein, clearly identifies the principles that have driven the changes in S&I's description of teaching and learning, describes how these adjustments differ from previous approaches, illustrates the significance of this shift, and presents the contemporary issues that influenced the increased clarity and direction from senior Church leaders to S&I.