One of the purposes of this study was to examine the differences between knowledge of pre-service physics teachers who experienced model-based teaching in pre-service education and those who did not. Moreover, it was aimed to determine pre-service physics teachers' perceptions of modelling. Posttest-only control group experimental design was used for the study. Participants of this research were 35 Turkish pre-service physics teachers taking the teaching methods course. The participants were randomly assigned to the groups. Qualitative and quantitative data analyses were implemented. Results indicated that implementation of the model-based teaching in the pre-service teacher education program did not make too much difference in the pre-service physics teachers' general knowledge of models. However, detailed examination showed that type of the model constructed and used, and phenomenon for which the model was constructed to represent in the model-based teaching might generate some differences between the knowledge of pre-service teachers in the experimental group and the knowledge of pre-service teachers in the control group in terms of characteristics, roles and functions of models. Moreover, promoting model-based teaching in the pre-service teacher education program might affect the pre-service physics teachers' perceptions of modelling positively and lead them to use models in their teaching. This study suggests that model-based teaching should be implemented in pre-service teacher education programs in different contexts. (Contains 1 table.)