IB MYP Individuals and Societies: Key concepts in MYP Individuals and Societies – Study Guide

This study guide is for IB MYP Individuals and Societies and follows the IB MYP Individuals and societies guide (for use from September 2014/January 2015; published May 2014, updated April 2021). It teaches the key concepts section of that guide: what a key concept is, the four the subject group contributes, and how a key concept joins a related concept and a global context to make a statement of inquiry and inquiry questions. It suits MYP years 4 and 5; MYP has no SL/HL split.

MYP has no prescribed content list – schools design their own units. The concepts, however, are prescribed: the guide says teachers must use the key and related concepts to build the curriculum, and schools may add their own. Your teacher will share the task-specific clarifications for each unit.

Use this page with the key concepts revision notes and the key concepts practice questions. For the whole course, see the MYP Individuals and Societies hub and the printable checklist.

What this unit covers

Area	What you must be able to do	Criterion it mainly trains
What a key concept is	Explain “big idea” and why concepts outlast facts	A
The MYP key concepts	Name the four I&S key concepts and know the full set exists	A
Each I&S key concept	Define it in your own words and apply it in history, geography and economics	A and D
Other key concepts	Explain how culture, development and communities can frame I&S units	A
Statements of inquiry	Build one from a key concept, related concepts and a global context	A and B
Inquiry questions	Write and sort factual, conceptual and debatable questions	B and D

What a key concept is

The guide describes a concept as a big idea: a principle that stays important beyond the topic, place or period where you first met it. Facts about one revolution or one river basin are useful; the concept behind them (for example, change) lets you explain a revolution or a river you have never studied.

Key concepts are broad ideas that matter within and across subjects, so they help you link:

• courses within individuals and societies, such as history and geography (the guide calls this intra-disciplinary learning)
• individuals and societies with other subject groups (interdisciplinary learning).

The guide’s table lists sixteen key concepts, explored across the whole MYP. The guide names four as the contribution of individuals and societies.

Group	Key concepts
Contributed by individuals and societies	change; global interactions; systems; time, place and space
Named by the guide as often important in I&S	culture; development; communities
The other MYP key concepts	aesthetics; communication; connections; creativity; form; identity; logic; perspective; relationships

Change

Meaning. Change is a move from one form, state or value to another. Inquiry into change looks at three things: causes, processes and consequences. In this subject, the guide stresses the forces that shape the world in the past, present and future. Causes and effects can be natural or human-made, intended or unintended, and positive, negative or neutral.

• History. In 1861 Tsar Alexander II issued the Emancipation Manifesto, freeing about 23 million Russian serfs. Cause: defeat in the Crimean War exposed Russia’s backwardness. Process: reform from above, by decree. Consequences: legal freedom, but many peasants got too little land and owed redemption payments over forty-nine years, which fed unrest – an unintended result.
• Geography. Lake Chad, bordered by Chad, Cameroon, Niger and Nigeria, shrank sharply from the 1960s. Its area fell from about 22,800 km² in 1966 to under 2,000 km² by 1994. The causes were both natural (a long drought from the late 1960s) and human (irrigation schemes diverting the rivers that feed it). Millions in the basin depend on it.
• Economics. Inflation is change in the general price level. Worked example with fictional figures: a basket of goods costs 50 dollars one year and 54 dollars the next.

Inflation = (54 − 50) ÷ 50 × 100 = 8%
100 dollars now buys what 100 ÷ 1.08 ≈ 92.59 dollars bought before

The concept question is “who gains and who loses?” – savers lose; borrowers repay with money worth less.

Global interactions

Meaning. Global interactions looks at connections between people and communities, and between people and their built and natural environments, seen from the scale of the whole world. In I&S the guide focuses on interdependence: how people conflict and cooperate while sharing finite resources.

• History. The Panama Canal opened on 15 August 1914, linking the Atlantic (via the Caribbean) and the Pacific, so ships no longer had to sail round the southern tip of South America. It grew from conflict as well as cooperation: in 1903 US warships blocked Colombian troops while Panama declared independence, and the United States controlled the canal zone until the end of 1999.
• Geography. Ethiopia built the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam on the Blue Nile, starting in 2011 and inaugurating it in September 2025. Egypt and Sudan, downstream, raised concerns about how much water would reach them. A shared river makes three states interdependent: one country’s decision affects the others.
• Economics. In October 1973 the Organization of Arab Petroleum Exporting Countries (OAPEC) placed an oil embargo on several states, including the United States and the Netherlands. The world price of oil rose from about 3 dollars to nearly 12 dollars a barrel by 1974. Countries far from the dispute still paid more for fuel: energy markets are linked.

Systems

Meaning. A system is a set of parts that interact or depend on each other. Systems give structure and order; they can be static or dynamic, simple or complex. The guide adds that social and natural systems rely on equilibrium (a balanced state) and can be pushed out of it by internal or external forces.

• History. The Congress of Vienna (1814–1815) set up the Concert of Europe, in which five great powers (Austria, France, Prussia, Russia and the United Kingdom) were meant to restrain one another and keep a balance of power. The Crimean War (1853–1856) set Britain and France against Russia and strained the system, yet the war stayed limited and ended at the Congress of Paris in 1856: the system absorbed the shock.
• Geography. A drainage basin is an open system: inputs (precipitation), stores (soil water, groundwater, lakes), flows (infiltration, throughflow, surface runoff) and outputs (river discharge, evaporation). Deforestation cuts interception, so runoff is faster and flood peaks higher.
• Economics. A market is a system linking buyers and sellers through price. At the equilibrium price, the quantity buyers want equals the quantity sellers offer. An external shock, such as a poor harvest, cuts supply; the price rises until a new equilibrium is reached, and the effect spreads to linked markets as buyers switch to substitutes.

Time, place and space

Meaning. This single concept covers the absolute or relative position of people, objects and ideas – the “when” and the “where”. In I&S the guide treats time as a continuum of significant events, not just a count of years. Place is socially constructed: people give places value and meaning, and a location brings constraints and opportunities. Space is about where and why places are located, and about the flows that cross space, such as migration and trade. You can study it at local, regional, national and global scales.

• History. Ottoman forces under Mehmed II captured Constantinople on 29 May 1453. Its position on the Bosphorus, between Europe and Asia, is why it mattered: it controlled the sea route from the Black Sea towards the Mediterranean. Whose timeline you use matters: an ending for Byzantium, a new capital for the Ottomans.
• Geography. Absolute location is a fixed position, such as Singapore’s latitude of about 1° N. Relative location is position in relation to other places: Singapore sits off the southern tip of the Malay Peninsula, beside the Strait of Malacca, one of the world’s busiest shipping lanes between the Indian and Pacific Oceans. Relative location explains far more of its growth.
• Economics. Firms often cluster in space. Technology firms in California’s Silicon Valley gather near universities and each other to share skilled workers, suppliers and ideas: location is an economic advantage.

Other key concepts in I&S

The guide says other key concepts can also matter, naming culture, development and communities as examples often used in the humanities and social sciences.

• Culture – a unit on migrant food traditions.
• Development – a unit comparing living standards with the UN Human Development Index.
• Communities – a unit on a neighbourhood after a factory closure.

In the guide’s example statements of inquiry, each unit has one key concept as its main lens; a useful way to think about the others is as support.

From concepts to a statement of inquiry

A unit’s statement of inquiry puts conceptual understanding into a global context. A useful Marlbridge test: it should be a single sentence that holds across many cases, not a fact about one case.

Ingredients.

1. One key concept (broad, cross-subject).
2. One or more related concepts (narrower, from a discipline; the guide’s examples mostly pair two). The guide lists related concepts for economics, geography, history and integrated humanities, for example scarcity, trade and growth in economics; causality, networks and scale in geography; conflict, significance and interdependence in history. Teachers may choose others.
3. One global context – the real-world setting that shows why it matters. The six are identities and relationships; orientation in space and time; personal and cultural expression; scientific and technical innovation; globalization and sustainability; fairness and development. The guide notes that many I&S inquiries use orientation in space and time.

Worked example.

• Key concept: systems
• Related concepts: scarcity, sustainability
• Global context: globalization and sustainability
• Unit topic (school’s choice): water use in a farming region

Statement of inquiry: “When people take more from a natural system than it can replace, the whole system and the communities depending on it can be damaged.”

Check it: no named place or date (it transfers to Lake Chad, an aquifer or a fishery); it uses the key concept (system) and both related concepts (taking more than can be replaced = scarcity and sustainability); it links to a global issue.

Inquiry questions

The guide asks teachers and students to draw three kinds of question from the statement of inquiry.

Type	What it does	Example for the unit above
Factual	Recalls facts; one correct answer you can look up	Which countries border Lake Chad?
Conceptual	Explores a big idea; transfers to other cases	How does a change in one part of a water system affect the other parts?
Debatable	Weighs perspectives; reasonable people disagree	Should a government put farm exports ahead of a local fishing industry?

Tests: if a textbook settles it, it is factual. If it works for a different place unchanged, it is conceptual. If informed people could argue opposite answers with evidence, it is debatable.

How this is assessed

There is no separate “concepts” criterion. Concepts appear inside the four criteria. Criterion A (Knowing and understanding) asks you, by year 5, to show knowledge of content and concepts through developed descriptions, explanations and examples. Criterion D (Thinking critically) asks you to discuss concepts, issues, models and theories. The subject brief says the I&S curriculum explores factual, conceptual and debatable questions.

Common errors

• Treating “time, place and space” as three separate concepts. It is one linked key concept.
• Calling a related concept (causality, scarcity) a key concept.
• Writing a statement of inquiry that names one country or date, so it cannot transfer.
• Writing a “debatable” question that has a factual answer (“When did the embargo start?”).
• Describing change without causes, process and consequences.
• Saying “systems” without naming the parts and how they interact.
• Confusing absolute location (coordinates) with relative location (position relative to other places).

Related pages

See the criteria in practice, discipline options and the subject guide. Then test yourself with the practice questions.

Official syllabus

This study guide is 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 sections on related concepts, global contexts, statements of inquiry and inquiry questions that follow it.