Individuals & Societies

MYP Individuals & Societies encourages learners to respect and understand the world around them and equips them with the necessary skills to inquire into historical, contemporary, geographical, political, social, economic, religious, psychological, business, technological and cultural factors that have an impact on individuals, societies and environments. It encourages learners to consider local and global contexts. At FIS, Individuals & Societies is taught as an integrated course that incorporates disciplines traditionally studied under the general term “the humanities”: history, geography and economics. Students study interdisciplinary units that require inquiry from a number of perspectives, bringing together knowledge and conceptual understandings from multiple disciplines within the subject group. The study of Individuals & Societies helps students to appreciate critically the diversity of human culture, attitudes and beliefs. The course is important for helping students to recognize that content and methodology can be debatable  and controversial, and for practising the tolerance of uncertainty. Elements of study within this subject include experimentation and observation, reasoning and argumentation, the use of primary sources, and data that can be used to propose knowledge claims about human existence and behavior. In this subject group, MYP students begin to explore these knowledge claims by assessing validity, reliability, credibility, certainty, and individual, as well as cultural perspectives. The Individuals & Societies course also helps students to develop their identities as individuals and as responsible members of local and global communities. The course provides essential skills for developing empathy and international mindedness, including the idea that “other people, with their differences, can also be right” (IB mission statement). 

Aims 

The aims of MYP Individuals & Societies are to encourage and enable 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.

Assessment Criteria 

• Criterion A: Knowing and Understanding.

• Criterion B: Investigating.

• Criterion C: Communicating. 

• Criterion D: Thinking critically.

Note: In other educational systems this Individuals & Societies course may be called Humanities or Social Studies.