Pre-service mathematics teachers: How to make them ready to be ready

The changes concerning the final state examination, determined by the novelty of Slovak university law, stimulated us to make serious changes in the examination model of Didactics of Mathematics at our university. Moreover, we have observed significant gaps in pedagogical content knowledge (PCK) of our secondary pre-service teachers during the last years. These two stimuli led us to an improvement of the course of Didactics of Mathematics. In this paper, we present our new approach which was mainly focused on the assessment of the lesson plans presented by the pre-service teachers. The assessment was based on the rubrics which were developed through the course. After the application of the new approach, we have observed growth in PCK. We have partially confirmed reliability of the rubrics as well.