Instruction in workshop practice, which is one of the basic component parts of the subject of working instruction at the Basic Nine-Year School, has, compared with other subjects, many more outstanding problems. For methodological reasons it was first of all necessary to get hold of factual material to acquire a complex view of the present state of instruction in workshop practice and to find out the problems connected with it. That was also the purpose of an orientation research, the results of which form a substantial part of this paper. The research was carried out in a number of schools, which had been selected according to a plan, and was focussed on workshop instruction itself as well as on the conditions and means for providing such instruction. Individual chapters deal briefly with the results of the research and analyse them. The main problems arise, on the one hand, from the necessity to bring educational work in school workshops into harmony with the aims of communist education, and, on the other hand, from the necessity to get to know the basic laws governing the educational process in school workshop as a basic condition for its effective control. Empiric direction of educational work must be replaced by direction which is scientifically accounted for, and is based on the discovered laws governing this process.