The first in-service teacher training centers were established in October 1945. Their purpose was to provide methodological assistance to teachers by organizing meetings, conferences, courses, reference library and art rooms depending on local and financial capabilities. These centers, also called teacher-training institutions or scientific-teaching institutions, did not form a single institutional organization. Therefore, in 1951 the Central Center for the Improvement of Educational Personnel (CODKO) was established with the headquarters in Warsaw. At the lower levels provincial and district centers for the improvement of educational personnel (WODKO and PODKO) were set up. Their aim was to raise the teaching and ideological-political level of the teachers. The provincial centers were composed of subject sections. Heads of sections organized conferences and courses for teachers, inspected lessons, gave professional advice to instructors, and supervised schools in individual districts. An especially popular form of improvement of professional qualifications of drawing teachers were all kinds of training conferences. The centers were replaced in 1957 by provincial and district in-service teacher training institutions for particular subjects, pre-school education and child care. The Central In-Service Teacher Training Center (COM) in Warsaw, with subordinate regional and district inservice teacher training centers (OOM and POM) were established. Especially conspicuous in their activities were inter alia art education sections in the OOMs in Warsaw, Koszalin, Wrocław, and in Lublin. The exemplary activities for upgrading teacher's professional proficiency were also conducted in the POM in Zawiercie. In June 1972 the Institute for Teacher Education was established in Warsaw, with the Central In-Service Teacher Training Center being disbanded. At the lower, local levels the subordinate institutions were set up as Institutes for Teacher Education and Education Studies (IKNiBO). This institution was one of the first which not only conducted teacher improvement training but also prepared theoretical foundations of this activity by conducting its own scientific studies. The research tasks and their coordination was the responsibility of the IKNiBO Public-Scientific Board, which was composed of elected university teachers. In May 1981 the order of the Minister for Education transformed the institutes for teacher education and educational studies into departments for teacher improvement subordinated to the W. Spasowski Institute for Teacher Education in Warsaw. Inspectors-methodologists were re-appointed as teachers-methodologists and given posts in the teacher improvement departments. In 1989 there was one more re-organization of the system of teacher professional improvement, including methodological advisory assistance. The Institute for Teacher Education in Warsaw was renamed the Center for Teacher Improvement and was given a statute. The local teacher improvement divisions were abolished and replaced by divisions of the center for teacher improvement.