Initial training and certification for the teaching profession, between desideratum and achievement

From a theoretical perspective, this study synthetically presents the main paradigms/models for future teachers’ training, which have been globally developed throughout the past decades, as well as the current teacher training model in Romania. On these grounds, the applicative ascertaining research that we have conducted had in view two main objectives: 1.The analysis of the performances obtained by future teachers during their initial training programme (at TTD, the Department of Teacher Training) and at certification exams; 2.The efficiency measurement for this programme accounts for a direct relation between the graduates’ results and the didactic profession standards. The research findings confirm the research hypotheses and point at the performances obtained by subjects throughout their initial training program for the didactic profession, as well as during their certification exam. There is a significant positive correlation between the TTD graduation general average grade and the average grade obtained by students at the certification exam, based on their portfolio assessment. The correlation indices between the diverse variables taken into account reveal significant differences between the students’ performances on the certification exam depending on the gender variable. There are also notable specialization-dependent variations in the general average grades obtained by students along the initial training program, as well as major differences (in 9 out of the 10 comparisons made) from one specialization to another, between the average grades obtained at the portfolio-based certification exam, in which the students in Letters obtained the best results