Faith and STEM Education: A Path to Mutual Elevation in Catholic Schools

Amidst increasing religious disaffiliation, often due to a perceived tension between faith and the STEM disciplines, Catholic schools provide critical opportunities for young people to recognize how these domains can be mutually elevating. The field, however, lacks guidance as to how this integration should occur in practice. This conceptual paper first provides an overarching framework for how aspects of the Catholic tradition, like Scripture and the Catholic social tradition, can shape traditional educational domains of STEM teaching and learning. Secondly, we provide a heuristic of three criteria for deeply engaging students at the interface of the Catholic faith and the STEM disciplines. Finally, we narrow in on K-12 science standards and provide six examples of how the three criteria can be applied to authentically and deeply advance understanding at the intersection of science and the Catholic faith

STEM Education in a Catholic Key: Implementing Catholic Social Teaching in the STEM Classroom

STEM education has become a critical lever for helping young people develop their intellectual capacities and for advancing social goods in our communities. In Catholic schools, the STEM disciplines serve these functions and yet are further called to be animated by our Christian mission and informed by our Catholic faith. As a countervailing perspective to the prominent secular ideology which sunders science from religion, we understand the STEM classroom as a particularly relevant milieu for integrating the wisdom of the Church’s social tradition. By exploring how Catholic Social Teaching (CST) can be enacted within STEM education, we hope to serve teachers as they cultivate novel and creative ways in which they and their students can work together to promote a learning environment that aims for the full flourishing of each human person and an ever-greater realization of the common good. This research endeavor examines the intersection of STEM education and Catholic Social Teaching and seeks to identify effective ways in which CST can be implemented in K12 STEM education, both curricularly and instructionally. We ask: How do elements of CST integrate into our understanding of best practices in STEM education? And how might CST extend, transform, or challenge our existing notions of effective STEM education? To establish a theoretical basis, we look to the intersection of theology, STEM education, and philosophy of science