In the GDR, several didactic guidelines that affected the design of schooling were referred to as basic didactic principles (didaktische Grundprinzipien) or basic principles of teaching. To this day, strong references to some of these principles in educational science and education policy are to be found in discourses about the GDR.

Didactic principles were defined by the Ministry of Education in the "Regulation on the Lesson as the Basic Form of Schoolwork, the Preparation, Organisation, and Conduct of the Lesson, and the Monitoring and Assessment of Pupils' Knowledge” of 1950 (Verordnung über die Unterrichtsstunde als Grundform der Schularbeit, die Vorbereitung, Organisation und Durchführung der Unterrichtsstunde und die Kontrolle und Beurteilung der Kenntnisse der Schüler, 1950), during a sovietisation phase that lasted until June 1953. The regulation was modelled on a Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (Zentralkommittee der Kommunistischen Partei der Sovietunion, CPSU) resolution from 1932 on the curricula and school regulations for primary and secondary schools. It was modelled on Stalinist-style school teaching (cf. Anweiler & Meyer, 1961, pp. 33-37) as well as comparatively conservative ideas from German schooling tradition. The principles were mostly dimensioned towards synthesis. For example, the principle of the systematic nature of teaching made it mandatory to align lesson content with current findings in the respective academic disciplines, while at the same time assigning a political function and dimension to their scientific basis namely "the connection of the scientific nature of teaching with the education of pupils to become progressive democrats (...) in the fight for peace (...), the unity of Germany (...), the transformation of social and economic conditions". This message was primarily directed against all didactic and methodological approaches that were close to so-called bourgeois school reformers (ibid., Ministry of Education, Ministerium für Volksbildung, MfV, 1950, II) and were described as reactionary and imperialist. In addition to increased structuring and standardisation in the design of lessons, the regulation also required comprehensibility, as well as a use of teaching methods and references that could be varied according to the respective needs of pupils.

The Regulations for Schooling of 1959 (MfV, 1959) and legal provisions for the people’s education system (Volksbildungswesen) contained rather fragmented elements but these principles continued to characterise the theory and, to a large extent, practice in schools. In 1987, for example, the pedagogical dictionary of the Academy of Pedagogical Sciences (Akademie der Pädagogischen Wissenschaften, APW) defined the unity of scientific rigour (Wissenschaftlichkeit) and partisanship (Parteilichkeit), the combination of theory and practice, the principle of individual consideration of the personality of the pupil on the basis of work with the pupil collective, and the principle of the leading role of the teacher and the independence of pupils as categories derived from the goals and principles of teaching (Laabs et al., 1987, pp. 84-85). The principles, often limited to the leading role of the teacher, developed into central terms in teacher training and didactics. Like the other principles, it was related to both professional and socio-political requirements. During the years of the GDR, it was a defining feature of schooling and schools in general.