In teacher training different objectives can be pursued, different aspects can be focused, different attention can be paied to different kinds of preparation. Our contribution is mainly focused on the problems arising with prospective and in service teachers at grades K-8 and 9-12 (students 3-10 and 11-14 years old). The needs of Italian science teachers at K-12 school level are very different, depending on their status (in-service or prospective teachers), on their previous preparation, on the school level where they have to teach. Involved as professors in recent University courses for teachers preparation, in the last years we planned some national research projects devoted:· to design a model for in-service and pre-service preparation of physics teachers;

• to prepare Web materials to drive teachers from their commonse sense, everyday life knowledge toward scientific knowledge. http://pctidifi.mi.infn.it/secif. In a first project our main topic was “Light and vision” (http://pctidifi.mi.infn.it/lucevisione/), in a current project it is “Oscillations and waves”;
• to create a community of practice of teachers working in school and communicating through the network, collaborating among them and with university researchers and students. Teachers too are involved in the design and implementation of Web materials containing proposals for colleagues and students (on Light, color and energy they prepared the Web site http://pctidifi.mi.infn.it/set funded by the Ministry of Instruction) and reports or works made in their classes.

One of the main future goals is the implementation of a Web site useful for at-a-distance training of teachers working at individual as well as at community level. We are now testing this material with pre-service teachers studying in University courses and laboratories and making their apprenticeship in school, under the supervision of expert teachers. The results of these tests will be used for the optimisation of the Web material to address problems from the cultural as well as from the professional perspective, on the theoretical as well as on the practical plan, looking for a good balance and equilibrium between them.