Abstract
Anxiety toward Experimental Sciences represents a relevant challenge in pre-service teacher education, particularly when students have diverse academic backgrounds and educational experiences. This study aimed to analyze the variability of anxiety toward Experimental Sciences among Early Childhood Education and Primary Education pre-service teachers, examining differences associated with academic, disciplinary, and experiential characteristics, as well as the relative relevance of cognitive, attitudinal, and educational variables. A total of 325 students from the University of Jaén participated in the study. Descriptive analyses, Pearson correlations, tests of differences between groups, analysis of variance, a conditional inference tree, a Random Forest regression model, and multiple linear regression were conducted, complemented by sensitivity analyses and an exploratory interaction test. Metacognitive awareness showed the greatest consistency across the analytical procedures: it was negatively associated with anxiety, constituted the first split in the conditional inference tree, and ranked first in permutation importance in the Random Forest, while also maintaining a significant association in the regression model (β = −0.213). Although metacognitive awareness and academic achievement showed the greatest relative importance, the Random Forest showed modest predictive performance (OOB R2 = 0.044). Academic achievement in Experimental Sciences showed a similar pattern (β = −0.162). Familiarity with STEAM and gender also showed significant associations in the regression model, whereas attitudes toward science, teacher digital competence, and science teaching self-efficacy showed relative importance in the Random Forest. In conclusion, the results reveal a multidimensional pattern of anxiety toward Experimental Sciences and suggest the value of addressing it from an integrated perspective within pre-service teacher education and Experimental Sciences teaching.