Creating Courses that Integrate Science and Culture: Facilitating Learning Across Three Knowledge Domains

(Caption: Image from the Florentine Codex depicting the importance and knowledge of agriculture in 16^th century Aztec culture.)

In this blog, a historian of science (Kathleen Vongsathorn), agricultural biologist (Robyn Roberts), and environmental geoscientist (Sharon Locke) show how they developed science courses that integrate humanistic perspectives to better support student learning of foundational science concepts and to help prepare students to apply science to solve societal challenges.

Why Integrate STEM and Humanities?

Integration of the humanities and arts within STEM courses can increase student interest, retention, and success in STEM.¹ While many STEM faculty may have an interest in using this educational approach, they may not know where to begin. Using the STEM Futures framework of Kerelick, Mishra, Fahnoe, and Terry,² our team developed course models and instructional tools for this integrative approach to STEM education. The materials and tools prompt students to think deeply about three domains of knowledge–foundational (core content), humanistic (values), and meta-knowledge (applying knowledge by acting) in the context of a specific discipline. STEM courses often touch on the history of science, but foreground the contributions of the white majority, in line with the dominant narrative of many university-level textbooks. Our model courses highlight the scientific contributions of local, traditional, and indigenous communities, as well as historically marginalized groups, emphasizing the diversity of the scientific endeavor across geographies and time. This provides students with a holistic view of their discipline and promotes perspective-taking, that is, students are challenged to consider science from perspectives different from their own. This gives students increased opportunities to identify themselves as belonging in science, especially women and underrepresented minorities.

Research indicates that active coursework is essential to successfully integrating humanities and arts into STEM.^{1, 3-5} A lecture from a guest speaker, for example, has little effect on student learning outcomes.¹ In our own collaboration, we also wanted to ensure that humanistic and meta perspectives were not separated from foundational knowledge. It may be easier for students to discount humanistic perspectives as not relevant, because they might not be accustomed to focusing on foundational knowledge in science classes. The method of integration we developed was the creation of several case studies that incorporate all three knowledge domains and link closely to the science content being discussed.

Getting Started

Our first step in creating case studies is to think more inclusively and historically about what is “science” and who has contributed to it. Historians of science consider systematic attempts to understand the natural world through observation and experimentation as contributions to scientific knowledge. From this perspective, the pool of past, present, and future contributors to science becomes larger, more diverse, and – critically – is a much more accurate representation of how contemporary scientific knowledge has been generated. Kathleen, our historian of science, describes this collaborative process here:

“My first step is to find out more about the foundational goals of the course. Preliminary syllabi, course learning goals, class readings, and discussion with my colleagues about their vision for the class are the most effective tools to spark ideas for case study topics. We individually brainstorm possible case studies and narrow down possibilities based on what best fits the learning goals for each part of the course, and which – in my experience teaching history of science to interdisciplinary groups of students – is most likely to generate productive discussion. Once we have loosely identified the case studies, how many there will be, and where they best fit with the content covered, we begin further developing each case study. First, we generate material for the students to read, watch, or listen to. Sometimes I synthesize a wider literature into a 1–2-page summary more directly targeted towards our case study. I’ll often gather relevant film clips and historical sources, show them to my colleague, and then narrow down based on what best fits the foundational knowledge goals for their class. Where the situation allows, I prepare a brief contextual lecture and my colleague creates a mirrored case study that relates the concepts more explicitly to the foundational content being discussed. Once the material is prepared, we create questions for the students to discuss.”

Case Study Examples

For example, in an agricultural capstone course, the instructor and science historian worked together to develop a case study around George Washington Carver. While many students are aware of the contributions of Carver as “the peanut guy,” many are unaware of the vast number of other scientific contributions of Carver, including a focus on local and sustainable agriculture to benefit poor, Black farmers of the southern U.S. Lessons from Carver challenged students to think of agriculture as a system, including how to choose crops that will thrive in local environments, reduce agricultural waste, and prevent diseases and pests in the field and in storage.

Another case study was based on the Aztecs and their knowledge of hydrology and soils as recorded in the 16th century Florentine Codex. Students viewed a short video about the Aztec city of Tenochtitlan and its “floating gardens” agricultural system, and then examined original text and images from the Codex. In a course on sustainable watersheds, students discussed the types of water represented in the text and drawings (e.g., wetlands, springs). For a contemporary example, students examined the decades-long but ultimately successful effort to grant the same legal rights as a person to the Whanganui River in New Zealand. They consider the implications of the river’s personhood for those who live and work with the river and for resource management, which is the career that many of the students will enter.

These examples are part of a series of case studies developed for each class, with the intention of gradually increasing critical awareness of different perspectives on science.

Rewards and Challenges

Kathleen: For me, these are incredibly rewarding collaborations – they go beyond what either of us could create on our own. The conversations themselves spark new ideas, and it’s fun to figure out how to get students to look at a 16th-century Aztec text and figure out how the Aztecs harnessed biogeochemical cycles or utilized systems thinking to improve their agricultural efficiency. It’s equally interesting to look at a contemporary case of watershed management, and complicate the narrative by bringing in historic tensions, ongoing inequalities, and alternative (often indigenous) solutions. In my own classes, I have no interest in reproducing narratives of the scientific accomplishments of dead white men, which are not accurate reflections of who has created scientific knowledge, but are all too readily available, because of the power dynamics at play when science was professionalized and histories of science began to proliferate. But historic examples of BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, and other People of Color) and women’s contributions in any given area of science are not easy to find if you don’t know where to look. My background is in non-Western history – so I do know where to look (see Resources for some examples) – and it is so rewarding to collaborate with my colleagues to bring our knowledge domains together, with a seamlessness that I never could have anticipated before this project. One of the most rewarding aspects of the collaboration also has the potential to be one of the greatest challenges. This collaboration involves many working sessions and meetings over the course of months. It’s a pleasure, but also a huge time commitment for the STEM and humanities faculty involved.

Robyn: Leaders in the agricultural industry have expressed the need for a more broadly trained workforce from undergraduate education. This includes teaching students how to think about agriculture as a system, not just from one perspective. For example, a problem with a plant disease is not just a “disease” issue, but also a humanistic one– How was the disease brought there? What farming practices support disease development?  Who is affected by the disease?  What are the economic and social costs of the disease?  How do we prioritize solutions to the problem? Using the course framework and case studies gives students real-life examples of how to approach these problems. It is incredibly rewarding to see how students’ understanding of agriculture broadens over the duration of the course. Because students come from different backgrounds and disciplines within the agricultural biology major, discussing student viewpoints and approaches to problems exposes all students to different perspectives. While the upfront work and time in planning the course and integrating the humanities and meta-knowledge aspects into the foundational material was challenging, once I had taught the course the second iteration was much easier to put together using student feedback and help from my colleagues. The assistance I received from the other excellent teachers in our project was incredibly helpful, as the project was a great training tool to me as an early-career instructor.

This was recapitulated in end-of-course student surveys, including the following selected quotes:

“Before this course, I felt I had many skills in a variety of areas, but did not quite have the means to put them all together and solve problems with them. Now that this course is over, I believe I have gained many tools to help problem solve when given information, especially in areas that are not my specialty.“

“This course helped me see the big picture when it comes to agricultural issues. All of the case study discussions allowed me to see other viewpoints and potential overlooked issues that my peers provided. …The experience from the six case studies has caused me to view each and every issue with a greater scope to incorporate everything I have learned at CSU.”

“…the case study evaluations we did as a class [forced] me to think beyond the laboratory research environment. I gained a lot out of thinking critically on a foundational, humanistic and meta level.“

Sharon: The rewards for me are two-fold–I personally have come to understand my discipline from a completely different perspective, and my students began to think differently about science. Student comments suggest that previously students were exposed to science almost exclusively from a Western perspective. Similarly, the history of scientific observation I was taught as a geology graduate student began with the work of the Scottish geologist James Hutton in the mid-1700s. Kathleen’s knowledge as we jointly develop case studies extends that history much farther back, and to non-Western cultures. Through this work, I was motivated to complement the case studies with class discussion of journal articles by modern, non-Western scientists, and of the ways that the broader historical perspectives could be applied to the modern practice of environmental scientists. Working with Kathleen opened my eyes to a scholarly world I never knew. Planning time to ensure a logical flow of the integrated content of the course was a challenge. The STEM Futures framework calls for the instructor to intertwine foundational, meta, and humanistic knowledge like the strands of a rope. Through this approach, I aim to create a course that tells the story of watershed science in the past, present, and future. While my second time teaching the course this spring semester has felt more coherent and integrative, I still have more work to do and look forward to the next iteration.

Want to Get Involved?

The integration of humanities and STEM curriculum is associated with positive student learning outcomes such as “higher order thinking, creative problem solving, content mastery of complex concepts, enhanced communication and teamwork skills, and increased motivation and enjoyment of learning.” ^{1, 6-10}

Want to become involved? We are interested in expanding this work by connecting with other educators who would like to try out this approach to STEM learning. If you are interested, please email us at slocke@siue.edu or kvongsa@siue.edu.

Acknowledgements

We gratefully acknowledge the National Science Foundation’s Improving Undergraduate STEM Education program for supporting the project under Grant No. 2216176. Grant Co-PIs Hugo Gutierrez, STEM Futures course instructor at University of Texas-El Paso, and Tracy Wacker, independent consulting researcher, provided feedback on this blog and have been instrumental to the project’s success. The authors also wish to express their gratitude to the undergraduate students who have taken our courses and provided valuable feedback that informed course improvements.