IB MYP Individuals and Societies: Key concepts in MYP Individuals and Societies – Revision Notes

These revision notes are for IB MYP Individuals and Societies and follow the IB MYP Individuals and societies guide (for use from September 2014/January 2015; published May 2014, updated April 2021). They condense the guide’s key concepts section and the steps from concept to statement of inquiry and inquiry questions. They suit MYP years 4 and 5 (no SL/HL split). For full explanations and worked examples, read the key concepts study guide.

MYP has no prescribed content list – schools design their own units – but the key and related concepts are prescribed, and teachers must build units with them. Your teacher will share the task-specific clarifications.

Then test yourself with the key concepts practice questions. Course links: MYP Individuals and Societies hub and printable checklist.

Core definitions

• Concept – a big idea that stays important beyond the topic, place or period where you met it.
• Key concept – one of sixteen broad concepts explored across the MYP. Connects courses within I&S (intra-disciplinary) and I&S with other subjects (interdisciplinary).
• Related concept – a narrower concept rooted in one discipline, used to explore a key concept in more depth.
• Global context – one of six real-world settings that show why an inquiry matters.
• Statement of inquiry – one transferable sentence that places conceptual understanding in a global context.
• Inquiry questions – factual, conceptual and debatable questions drawn from the statement of inquiry.

The four I&S key concepts

Key concept	Core idea (own words)	What to analyse	Watch-word
Change	Movement from one form, state or value to another	Causes, processes, consequences; natural or human; intended or not	Transformation
Global interactions	Connections between people, communities and environments seen at world scale	Interdependence, conflict, cooperation, sharing finite resources	Interdependence
Systems	Interacting or interdependent parts	Parts, links, equilibrium, internal and external shocks	Equilibrium
Time, place and space	Absolute or relative position of people, objects and ideas	When, where, why there; constraints and opportunities of location; flows; scale	Location

Other key concepts the guide says can matter in I&S: culture, development, communities. The remaining MYP key concepts are aesthetics, communication, connections, creativity, form, identity, logic, perspective and relationships.

One example per discipline

Key concept	History	Geography	Economics
Change	Russia’s 1861 emancipation of the serfs, after Crimean War defeat	Lake Chad shrank from the 1960s through drought and irrigation	Inflation erodes the purchasing power of savings
Global interactions	Panama Canal (opened 1914): world shipping link and US–Panama relations	Ethiopia’s Blue Nile dam and the concerns of Egypt and Sudan	1973 OAPEC oil embargo: oil rose from about 3 to nearly 12 dollars a barrel
Systems	Concert of Europe (1815) and the strain of the Crimean War	Drainage basin as an open system	A market and its equilibrium price
Time, place and space	Constantinople’s capture (1453) and its Bosphorus position	Singapore: absolute vs relative location	Clustering of firms in Silicon Valley

Method in steps: analysing a case through a key concept

Change

1. State what changed (from what to what).
2. Give the cause(s) – label natural or human, intended or unintended.
3. Describe the process (how fast, through what).
4. Give consequences for named groups; say who gained and who lost.

Global interactions

1. Name the actors in different places.
2. Show the link (trade, migration, a shared resource, an idea).
3. Show a decision in one place affecting another.
4. Judge: cooperation, conflict, or both?

Systems

1. Name the parts (inputs, stores, flows, outputs; or actors and flows).
2. Show how they depend on each other.
3. Identify the equilibrium.
4. Trace one shock through the system.

Time, place and space

1. Fix the “when” and the absolute “where”.
2. Give the relative location (near what? on what route?).
3. Explain the opportunities and constraints that location gives.
4. Name the scale (local, regional, national, global) and any flows across space.

Method in steps: building a statement of inquiry

1. Choose one key concept.
2. Add one or more related concepts from the discipline (for example, economics: scarcity, trade, growth; geography: causality, networks, scale; history: conflict, significance, interdependence).
3. Choose one global context: identities and relationships; orientation in space and time; personal and cultural expression; scientific and technical innovation; globalization and sustainability; fairness and development.
4. Write one sentence linking them, with no named place, person or date.
5. Test it: does it fit at least two different cases?

Small worked reminder. Key concept: change. Related concepts: innovation and revolution, significance. Global context: scientific and technical innovation. Statement: “New technologies can change who holds power, often in ways their inventors did not expect.” It fits the spread of railways in the nineteenth century and of mobile phones today.

Second reminder. Key concept: time, place and space. Related concepts: networks, scale. Global context: orientation in space and time. Statement: “A settlement’s position on routes and networks can matter more to its growth than its natural resources.” It fits Constantinople on the Bosphorus and Singapore on the Strait of Malacca, and you could test it on a railway town or a river crossing near you.

Weak vs strong. “Singapore is a busy port” is a fact about one place. “Ports grow where trade routes meet” is conceptual and transferable.

Must-know distinctions

• Key concept vs related concept. Key concepts are broad and cross-subject (change). Related concepts are narrower and discipline-based (causality).
• Key concept vs global context. Global interactions is a key concept. Globalization and sustainability is a global context. Globalization is also a related concept. Say which you mean.
• Absolute vs relative location. Absolute: fixed coordinates. Relative: position in relation to other places, routes or resources.
• Static vs dynamic systems. Static: parts stay in a fixed arrangement. Dynamic: parts and flows keep shifting.
• Factual vs conceptual vs debatable questions. Factual: one checkable answer. Conceptual: a transferable big idea. Debatable: evidence-based answers can disagree.
• Place vs space. Place is a location people give meaning to. Space is about where places are and the flows between them.

Inquiry questions at a glance

Type	Starts like	Example (this unit’s own)
Factual	When, where, who, what	Which empire captured Constantinople in 1453?
Conceptual	How does, why does, what is the relationship between	How does relative location affect a port’s growth?
Debatable	Should, to what extent, is it ever	Should a country build a dam that reduces water for its neighbours?

Where concepts appear in assessment

• Criterion A (Knowing and understanding). By year 5 you show knowledge of content and concepts with developed explanations and examples, using a wide range of terminology.
• Criterion B (Investigating). A clear, focused research question can grow out of a conceptual or debatable inquiry question.
• Criterion D (Thinking critically). You discuss concepts, issues, models and theories, and interpret different perspectives.
• The subject brief says the curriculum explores factual, conceptual and debatable questions.

Quick self-test

1. Name the four key concepts the guide says individuals and societies contributes.
2. Name the three other key concepts the guide says often inform I&S.
3. What three things does inquiry into change examine?
4. Is “scale” a key concept or a related concept?
5. Classify: “Why do some places attract migrants while others lose people?”
6. Classify: “Did the Panama Canal benefit the United States more than Panama?”
7. Describe a port’s location in one absolute phrase and one relative phrase.
8. In a drainage basin system, is groundwater an input, store, flow or output?
9. In a market system, what happens to the price when supply falls and demand stays the same?
10. A fictional price index rises from 120 to 132. What is the percentage rise, and which key concept does it illustrate?
11. What is wrong with this statement of inquiry: “Egypt worries about Ethiopia’s dam”?

Answers

1. Change; global interactions; systems; time, place and space.
2. Culture, development and communities.
3. Causes, processes and consequences.
4. Related concept (listed for geography).
5. Conceptual – it asks about a transferable pattern.
6. Debatable – informed people can argue either way.
7. Absolute: “at 1° N, 104° E” (coordinates). Relative: “at the mouth of the main shipping strait”.
8. A store.
9. The price rises until a new equilibrium is reached.
10. (132 − 120) ÷ 120 × 100 = 10%; change.
11. It names specific countries and a single case, so it is a fact or a claim, not a transferable conceptual statement, and it has no clear key or related concept.

Where marks are usually lost

• Listing “time”, “place” and “space” as three key concepts.
• Naming causality, scarcity or power as a key concept.
• Giving a definition with no example from a real case.
• Describing a change but never naming its cause or its consequences.
• Using “system” as a vague word (“the economic system”) without naming parts and links.
• Using absolute location (coordinates) to explain growth that really depends on relative location.
• Writing a statement of inquiry that only fits one country or one event.
• Writing a “debatable” question that has one correct factual answer.
• Mixing up global interactions (key concept) with globalization (related concept and part of a global context name).

Official syllabus

These notes are aligned to the IB MYP Individuals and societies guide (for use from September 2014/January 2015; published May 2014, updated April 2021), section “Key concepts” and the following sections on related concepts, global contexts, statements of inquiry and inquiry questions.