Adaptation of the Math-Biology Values Instrument to Preservice Teachers: German, Portuguese, and Spanish Versions

Introduction

Fundamental problems of 21st-century society cannot be solved through single disciplines but require a global and integrative perspective. Current education fails to provide this perspective because, following a classical reductionist approach, educational systems are arranged into strict compartments of separate subjects (Brewer & Smith, 2011; Labov et al., 2010; McCright et al., 2013). From primary education, disciplines divide into different subjects, moving away from a global view of science (Stone, 2014). Acquiring a systemic perspective is significant for primary (elementary) education preservice teachers. If appropriately trained, they can transmit a global picture of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) disciplines since primary education. As in other European curricula, the Spanish elementary education curriculum includes a cross-sectional block of contents for integrating natural science subjects named “Initiation to research activity,” where sciences, technology, engineering, and mathematics are fully integrated (Spanish Government, 2022). Thus, as previously noticed (Šorgo, 2010), preservice teachers' science instruction requires an interdisciplinary perspective reflecting the current science and engineering practice. Mathematics plays a pivotal role in achieving this perspective because it allows students to model, represent, and interpret experimental and observational results from various disciplines, such as biology, a science with a long descriptive tradition (May, 2004; Oltvai & Barabási, 2002). According to current educational research, integrating math into biology curricula results in increased coherence in the undergraduate biological sciences curriculum, improves quantitative skills in students, and a greater appreciation among graduates for the essential relationship between mathematics and modern biology (Thompson et al., 2013).

The barriers to establishing math-science connections in the classroom are mainly grounded in prior experiences and inadequate training. In preservice teachers, previous student experiences determine their preconceptions about teaching mathematics. They make decisions based on an external locus of control (such as the university professor, the textbook, or other sources) and harbor higher anxiety about teaching math than science (Cady & Rearden, 2007; Mellado et al., 2014; Hernández-Barco et al., 2021). Content integration is more challenging for many preservice teachers than traditional content (Leszczynski, 2014). Teacher training programs generally lack a focus on integrated teaching and do not devote time to building connections (DeLuca et al., 2015; Kim et al., 2004). As a result, preservice teachers possess weak content knowledge in both disciplines and inadequate integration models. These teachers frequently ignore fundamental differences in mathematics and science knowledge organization. Past efforts to integrate math and science reflected an insufficient understanding of negative attitudes about integration among teachers (Bursal & Paznokas, 2006; Leszczynski, 2014). This attitude, defined as the enduring tendency to evaluate this integration such as positive/negative or good/bad, can be divided into three dimensions: 1) perceived control, which includes elements such as self-efficacy (subjective perception of own capability); 2) affective states, which provides for emotions such as enjoyment and anxiety and 3) cognitive beliefs, such as perceived relevance or subjective value (Bursal & Paznokas, 2006; Buss, 2010; Cady & Rearden, 2007; Leszczynski, 2014; Riegle-Crumb et al., 2015). Subjective value is the extent to which an outcome (math-science integration in this case) is desired or valued concerning the probability of success. Psychology and neuroscience recognize this subjective value as critical to achieving motivation (Eccles & Wigfield, 2020). The subjective value of preservice teachers to math-biology integration is unexplored, mainly due to de absence of a specific, reliable, and validated instrument to monitor changes in these subjective values. The availability of this instrument would pave the way to understanding attitudes toward math-biology integration. This chapter presents the development and psychometric properties of an instrument to monitor changes in the subjective value that preservice teachers ascribe to using mathematics in biology.