IB Middle Years Programme Individuals and Societies: Subject Overview

The IB Middle Years Programme Individuals and Societies subject group incorporates disciplines traditionally studied under humanities and social sciences. It encourages learners to respect and understand the world around them, and equips them with the skills to inquire into historical, geographical, political, social, economic and cultural factors that affect individuals, societies and environments.

What schools can offer within this subject group

For MYP Individuals and Societies, schools develop courses drawing on integrated humanities, history, economics, geography, philosophy, sociology/anthropology, business management, psychology, and world religions. A school may teach these as separate (discrete) courses, as modules studied one after another, or as one integrated course such as humanities or social studies. The IB’s approach includes a strong focus on inquiry and investigation: students collect, describe and analyse data, test hypotheses, and learn to interpret increasingly complex information, including original source material.

Aims

The course encourages and enables students to:

• appreciate human and environmental commonalities and diversity
• understand the interactions and interdependence of individuals, societies and the environment
• understand how both environmental and human systems operate and evolve
• identify and develop concern for the well-being of human communities and the natural environment
• act as responsible citizens of local and global communities
• develop inquiry skills that lead towards conceptual understandings of the relationships between individuals, societies and the environments in which they live.

Key concepts

The IB names four key concepts that broadly frame MYP Individuals and Societies. They are the big ideas that link what you study across different topics and disciplines.

• Change — how and why things become different over time: the causes, processes and consequences.
• Global interactions — how people, places and systems around the world connect and affect one another, through trade, migration, conflict or cooperation.
• Time, place and space — where and when something happens, and how its location and period shape it.
• Systems — sets of connected parts, such as an economy, a government or an ecosystem, where a change in one part affects the others.

Related concepts

Related concepts are narrower ideas that belong to particular disciplines and take your understanding deeper. The IB’s subject brief gives these examples:

• Causality — why events happen: the links between causes and effects.
• Globalization — the growing interconnection of economies, cultures and people around the world.
• Culture — the shared beliefs, values, customs and ways of life of a group.
• Sustainability — meeting people’s needs today without damaging the ability of future generations to meet theirs.

The full MYP subject guide lists more related concepts for each discipline (history, geography, economics and integrated humanities). Your teacher will tell you which ones your units use.

The six global contexts

Global contexts give each unit a real-world setting. You explore the key and related concepts through them.

• Identities and relationships — who we are, what we believe and value, and how we relate to families, communities and cultures.
• Orientation in space and time — personal and historical journeys, turning points in history, and how places and people are connected.
• Personal and cultural expression — how people express ideas, feelings, beliefs and culture.
• Scientific and technical innovation — how people use science and technology to change their environments and societies.
• Globalization and sustainability — how local and global systems are linked, and the effects of human decisions on people and the planet.
• Fairness and development — rights and responsibilities, access to opportunities, and how communities share resources and settle conflicts.

The four assessment criteria

Your teachers assess your work throughout the course against four equally weighted criteria. There is no Standard/Higher Level split: every student is assessed against the same criteria, and each one is marked on a 0–8 scale (the four bands run from 1 to 8, and 0 is given when work does not reach level 1). The four criteria together give a total out of 32, which the programme converts to a final grade.

• Criterion A: Knowing and understanding — show accurate factual knowledge and understanding of concepts, using subject terms correctly.
• Criterion B: Investigating — plan and carry out research: choose a clear focus, use suitable methods and sources, and reflect on how the investigation went.
• Criterion C: Communicating — organise and present your ideas clearly, in a format and style that fits the audience and purpose, and document your sources.
• Criterion D: Thinking critically — analyse and evaluate information, arguments, sources and perspectives, and reach conclusions you can support with evidence.

Most assessment is classroom-based, so you have many chances across the year to show what you can do against each criterion.

MYP eAssessment

Students who want IB-validated course results or the MYP certificate take a 2-hour on-screen examination at the end of MYP year 5. The IB’s subject brief lists on-screen examinations in history, geography and integrated humanities; the IB’s current Individuals and Societies web page describes eAssessment for integrated humanities courses (which can include economics, geography and history). Ask your school which examination you are entered for.

According to the subject brief (2021 edition), the examination has three tasks, and every task uses source material:

Task	Criteria	Marks
Investigating — evaluate an investigation and plan your own	A and B	26
Communicating — present information and ideas for a given audience, purpose and format	A and C	18
Thinking critically — discuss issues, arguments and perspectives, ending in extended writing	A, C and D	36

Topics the brief says the examinations explore include demographics and human movements; settlement and urban morphology; superpowers, empires, and supra-national alliances and organizations; significant individuals; warfare and peacekeeping; rights and social protest; trade, aid and exchange; economic agents (consumers, producers, governments, banks); measurements and trends; and industrialization and technological developments.

Because the tasks are built on unfamiliar sources, practising with new sources under timed conditions is a better use of revision time than memorising facts in isolation.

Looking ahead to the Diploma Programme

Working from sources, building an evidence-based argument and weighing different perspectives all carry forward to DP History, Geography, Global Politics, Economics and other individuals-and-societies subjects. The main change is that most DP assessment is by timed external examination, so practising timed, exam-style answers before DP begins helps.

Next steps

Read the syllabus guide for the full framework, then see what top-band work looks like in the four assessment criteria in practice. For a quick recap, use the assessment revision notes; if you are preparing for the on-screen examination, practise with source-evaluation exam preparation and check which subjects your course covers in discipline options and eAssessment subjects.

Source

International Baccalaureate Organization, Middle Years Programme Subject Brief: Individuals and societies, from 2014 (© IBO 2021), and the IB’s MYP Individuals and Societies curriculum page, ibo.org.