Concepts are what drive our MYP Design curriculum. They establish the conceptual framework in which the teaching and learning takes place. MYP Design units of inquiry must be organized around one of four Key Concepts (KC): Communication, Communities, Development, and Systems; and one or two related concepts. Using this combination, MYP design educators explore and develop some of the conceptual understandings for the unit.

We’ve been looking deeply at the key and related concepts in MYP design and considering how they are connected, and how we might unpack them for students. As part of this process, we identified connections between the concept and the MYP Design Cycle objectives. For example, the concept “communication” has direct connections to how designers communicate with clients and themselves.

Mapping the key concept *communication* to the MYP Design Cycle criterion.

To be honest, this was the first time we looked for connections between the key concept and the design cycle and it was hugely informative. We were able to make several strong connections and also generate some guiding questions about the role of these concepts in different parts of the design cycle. This has given us a different perspective on how these key concepts relate to the cycle, and also ways in which we can incorporate them into the teaching and learning experiences.

We took a similar approach in looking at the related concepts. These are the key drivers of the inquiry questions, so we looked at how they might connect with the three categories: Factual, Conceptual, and Debatable.

Many of the connections between these concepts and the inquiry questions were informed by conceptual understandings from the DP Design curriculum.

Below is the whole set. They can be downloaded as a PDF and used under a Creative Commons license.