This study examines potential uses of arts in ‘critical and altruistic’ STEM education that drew largely from the ‘STEPWISE’ (Science & Technology Education Promoting Wellbeing for Individuals, Societies & Environments) pedagogical framework. This framework prioritizes direct instruction about possibly problematic methods of relationships among fields of STEM and societies and environments (STEM-SE) to enable and motivate students to develop and implement sociopolitical actions to help overcome harms of their concern. This study questioned what values were especially critical to learning science from a sociopolitical lens and whether art could unearth that framing. To conceptualize how values are introduced through art during science learning experiences that align with STEPWISE, we found Sjöström et al. (Stud Sci Educ 53(2):165–192, 2017) Vision III pedagogy could be applied as a tool for critical reflexive science learning. The STEPWISE framework was (Bencze JL (ed) Science and technology education promoting wellbeing for individuals, societies and environments. Springer, Cham, 2017) adapted in practice by a high school teacher using Ontario’s grade 10 science curriculum. The direct instruction by the teacher sought to intentionally teach concepts to ensure that difficult-to-discover concepts like actor network theory, network mapping, and sociotechnical imaginaries can be woven into traditional unit flows. Results of our explorations and negotiations among co-authors and stakeholders suggest that fields of arts can help students develop new attitudes or values (e.g., equity, altruism), skills (e.g., engineering design) and knowledge (e.g., networked embeddedness of apparently individual entities, sometimes in ways coordinated to benefit some more than others). Aspects of the STEPWISE pedagogical framework applied in this study appear to promote values and ethics for transdisciplinarity and altruism.