The central idea of zankov's teaching theory is "to promote the all-round development of students with the greatest possible teaching effect". The teaching principles he put forward are: the principle of high difficulty, the principle of high speed, the principle that theoretical knowledge plays a leading role, the principle that students understand the learning process, and the principle that all students, including poor students, get universal development.

"General development" is relative to "special development". "General development" refers to the development of the whole personality, and "special development" refers to the development of knowledge and skills. In his view, "if teaching can promote students to make great progress in development, it is not enough to teach only from the task of mastering knowledge and skills." In teaching, we should pay special attention to the principles of teaching theory and teaching method, so as to accomplish two tasks at the same time. "

Overall development concept:

The so-called all-round development refers to the development of children's personality and all aspects, that is, not only the development of students' intelligence, but also the development of emotion, will, quality, personality and collectivism. If general development is understood as intellectual development, it can not reflect the integrity of personality development.

1964 zankov said in the experiment of the new system of primary school teaching: "General development is different from special development, which refers to the progress of students' personality in all aspects (including moral sense, observation, thinking, memory, speech and willpower). "

Later, in "Conversation with Teachers", he further explained clearly that general development not only refers to intellectual development, but also refers to the development of students' intelligence, emotion, will quality, personality and collectivism.

1975 once again mentioned in "Teaching and Development" that "general development" should include physical development and psychological development, but "the teaching and development problems we study have certain limitations: we study the relationship between teaching and children's general psychological development.