The Role of Educational and Demonstration Workshops in the Development of Vocational Education and Training for the Handicraft Industry of Tomsk Province in the Early XX Century

Abstract

The present research featured educational and demonstration handicraft workshops in the Tomsk Province in the early XX century. The research objective was to determine the general course and features of the workshops that played a significant role in the modernization of technology and handicrafts in the region, along with other institutions of the Tomsk State Handicraft Committee, e.g. museums, warehouses, and libraries. The workshops became an important part of vocational education. A major role on the state level belonged to the administration of land management and agriculture and the Imperial Russian technical society. In the Tomsk province it belonged to the Tomsk Provincial Handicraft Committee and the Tomsk Department of the Russian Technical Society. By 1917, seventeen settlements in six parishes of the Province had seventeen workshops in nine areas of handicraft industry. Weaving, wagon-making, and agricultural engineering workshops predominated. They became centers for the development of vocational education and the popularization of new technologies. They organized educational support workshops for the adult population, sold modern machinery and materials, built warehouses for handicrafts and repair shops, instructor schools, etc. The network of workshops, along with vocational educational institutions, became the basis for the Soviet system of vocational education in Siberia in the post-revolutionary period. The paper contains an analysis of researches and historical sources. The results helped to fill the gaps in the history of vocational education in the South of Western Siberia.