The webinar, “Christian Faith and STEM Teaching,” was co-sponsored by the DeVries Institute for Global Faculty Development, the International Network for Christian Higher Education, and the Kuyers Institute for Christian Teaching and Learning. The event gave registrants from around the globe an opportunity to consider how to engage students in the learning process in ways that draw from Christian faith. The webinar was inspired by a journal article written by these Calvin and Trinity scholars related to faith and pedagogy in STEM areas, led by David Klanderman of Calvin's Mathematics and Statistics department.
Klanderman was inspired by David Smith’s award-winning book, On Christian Teaching: Practicing Faith in the Classroom. Noticing that most of the teaching examples in the book were from the humanities, Klanderman decided to form a team of STEM scholars. The goal of their collaboration was to think about pedagogical practices that flow from creative imagination, encourage student engagement, and reshape practice in ways that are shaped by Christian faith—three themes that are central to Smith’s book.
Klanderman’s team published their research as “Faith Integration in STEM Courses for Undergraduates: Exemplars of Pedagogical Practices,” in the International Journal of Christianity and Education (IJCE). Several of the co-authors served as panelists to present ideas from the article as examples from various disciplines.
Professor Tina Decker, from Trinity Christian College's Nursing Department, described how she frames the physiological structure and function of the heart as the creation of God, seeing it as a beautiful and intricate part of our bodies that should evoke wonder. She also described how the physical layout of Trinity's learning environment in nursing is intended to facilitate student communication and engagement. It is a physical layout informed by a Christian vision of learning in community.
In the realm of Computer Science, Victor Norman of Calvin University encourages his students to pursue beauty in coding. “Creating Beauty” in computer code becomes a manifestation of worship and honor of God. Norman encourages students to write clear code that will be beautiful, in the sense of readable, intelligible, and useful for others.
Fred Haan from Calvin University focused on the Christian idea and practice of love in his comments on teaching engineering. He paraphrased the famous love chapter of 1 Corinthians 13 with applications to engineering: “If I have the gift of prophecy and can understand precipitation hardening and flow stress . . . but do not have love, I am nothing.” For Haan, love requires listening and attention, which is important both in teaching and in the engineering profession. Drawing upon on Smith, he observed that allowing students ample time to think through questions before moving on in class is not simply important because of how brain processing and cognition work, but also because of it is “communicating something to students” that they matter to the classroom community and the learning happening there. Similarly, in engineering practice: Love involves noticing the human beings involved, including listening carefully to those who will be affected by a new engineering design. Careful listening and attention can help engineers to avoid design that will be potentially harmful to those who do the building or those who are affected by the results of the project.
Calvin University professor Jim Turner proposed that presenting mathematics to students requires a “sequence of learning, invention, and discovery.” From a faith perspective, he regards it as important to frame math as a perspective on God’s creation as “fundamentally ordered.” Rooting his teaching in a sense of students as whole persons who should be encouraged to integrate the various things they know, Turner hopes to help students see mathematics as a key part of human knowledge and an important tool in the communal project of developing potential good. Turner’s approach, rooted in communal learning, seeks to alleviate anxiety and promote a deeper understanding of mathematics in relation to human flourishing.
Abbie Schrotenboer from the biology department at Trinity described teaching strategies that facilitate relationship-building and faith-inspired mindsets toward the natural world. She arranges the physical layout of her classroom in ways that encourage students to collaborate and communicate with each one another. The way she uses language in the classroom is intended to inspire in her students a connection with and renewed vision of God's creation. In lab settings, her students are invited into an experience of scientific inquiry that reflects hospitality and encourages them to take responsibility for their role in the world.
After hearing from these panelists from STEM teaching disciplines, David Smith offered a brief response. He expressed his gratitude to the authors of the article for their creative consideration of how Christian faith can directly and indirectly inform the choices teachers make as they engage their students in the learning process. He emphasized that formation of students “is not only happening when we think we’re doing intentionally formative things.” Rather, it is happening all the time, “through the overall texture of what happens”—in the seating arrangement, syllabus, learning activities, assignments, forms of engagement, etc. He encouraged the webinar audience to seek synergy between the things we say in the classroom, especially those things related to Christian faith, and the things we do in the classroom.