Methodological Aspects Regarding The Exercising Of The Research Competence Of A Pre-Service Teacher

One of the key responsibilities of a teacher is to initiate and carry out pedagogical research so as to make their own teaching activity more efficient, improve it and, implicitly, the students' learning. The research competence plays an important role in the teacher's competence profile, enhancing the latter. We believe that the Pre-service Teacher Training Programme should maximise opportunities for exercising this competence. The subjects in the curriculum, both for Level 1 training, but especially for Level 2, create such opportunities. The study aims to investigate the effectiveness of some of the ways in which this competence is exercised by Master's students, within the discipline of Methodology of Educational Research, which is part of the curriculum of the Teacher Training Programme - Level 2. The research methods used were the survey, based on questionnaire, and the pedagogical content knowledge test, the appropriate tools being the pedagogical content knowledge test and questionnaire. The sample of subjects was made up of 83 1st year Master's students of the Faculty of Letters, (in Romanian, English, French, translation, communication, music, acting), enrolled in the Teacher Training Programme - Level 2. The results obtained have made it possible to identify the pre-service teachers' level of training, and the development of the competence to design pedagogical research.