TRAINING THE STUDENTS' TEACHING SKILLS DURING TEACHING PRACTICE

The initial training for teaching in Romania is provided during university studies for those students who are attending an optional psycho-pedagogical module, including the teaching practice as an important discipline. Through this article we want to demonstrate that teaching practice is the discipline that mostly provides the training for the students' teaching skills. The research methodology used for this survey is based on analysis of work products, including lesson plans and the apprentice students' essays about the efficiency of teaching practice for their training as future teachers. The systematic observation of the apprentice students' behaviour during their teaching activities completes the research methodology. In the first section of the article we derived the necessary teaching skills for the teachers of History and of Arts education, by corroborating the professional skills of History and of History of Arts graduates with those of Pedagogy graduates as they are presented in the National Higher Education Registry. Then we exemplified the design teaching skills which have been achieved by the apprentice students. The selected examples represent objectives and appropriate learning activities, included in apprentice students' lesson plans. The examples show that the apprentice students have also developed their skills of selecting the scientific contents, teaching methods and historical sources, or the skill of leading their learners to the correct interpretation of the message contained therein. Some skills of outcome assessment and of self-assessment for the quality of teaching are also exemplified in the final section of the article. The conclusion underlines the types of teaching skills which have been trained during teaching practice, including the reflexive skills that allow the apprentice students to analyze the efficiency of their teaching practice for their initial training as teachers