Irkutsk Pedagogical Institute

an institute founded in 1920 as the Institute of People’s Education; it was reorganized in 1921 as the pedagogical department of the University of Irkutsk, and in 1931 it again became an independent pedagogical institute.

The Irkutsk Pedagogical Institute comprises the departments (1972) of history, Russian language and literature, natural sciences and geography, mathematics, physics, vocational teacher training, pedagogy and methodology of preschool education, pedagogy and methodology of elementary education, defec-tology, and musical pedagogy. There is a correspondence division as well as a graduate school. The institute also has 26 subdepartments, a laboratory for solving various problems, and four scientific research laboratories. Its library has approximately 400,000 storage units. During the 1971–72 academic year the institute had 7,000 students and a teaching staff of more than 400, including seven professors and doctors of sciences and more than 100 docents and candidates of sciences. The institute publishes Uchenye zapiski (since 1934) and interuniversity collections (since 1968). Over the years, the institute has trained approximately 15,000 specialists.