The well known phenomenon of the "reality shock" experienced by the young teachers when they face the school reality is at the basis of the main criticisms of every pre-service teacher model in which the theoretical part and the practical one are taken apart.
At the University of Bologna an integrated model for pre-service Physics teacher education has been designed and implemented within the Post-graduate School for Secondary School Teachers (SSIS). The model has been shaped on the professional profile of "teacher as researcher" and implemented by guiding student-teachers toward an aware management of the practice period in school in the fourth (and last) semester of the School as a real research experience. The goal of the practice period is to support the process of "conceptual change" about teaching in terms of transition from "teacher as content knowledge dispenser" to "teacher as curriculum maker". The practice period is carried out through a cooperative work among student-teachers, experienced teachers and university researchers in Physics Education, along the following phases:

• designing a teaching project (on the basis of results in Physics education research) about an issue to be covered in 20-24 school-periods;
• implementing the teaching project in a real classroom setting and monitoring the classroom activities;
• analysing all the data collected;
• reporting the obtained results in a dissertation thesis to be discussed in the final examination.

The results of a four-year experience will be discussed in terms of the role played by the different components (disciplinary, epistemological, pedagogical, practical, and so on) in supporting the process of transforming theoretical competences (both from General Education and from Disciplinary Education, including Epistemology/History of Physics, Physics Education, Lab of Physics Education) into effective tools to be spent in action. Particular attention will be paid to the problem of defining the level of confidence in Physics content knowledge (in particular Modern Physics) student-teachers must have as necessary condition to look at Physics teaching as a process of cultural and educational mediation.