STEM education in the MYP

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The Middle Years Programme (MYP) focuses on STEM as an important perspective from which to consider integrated teaching and learning in concepts and skills related to science, technology, engineering and mathematics.

How does STEM learning take place in the MYP?

The MYP is designed to facilitate interdisciplinary learning and teaching. The structure of the programme offers a variety of opportunities for students to make connections between and among traditional academic disciplines, including STEM subjects.

STEM-based learning can be structured through MYP personal and community projects as well as through both formal and informal interdisciplinary learning experiences in many MYP subject groups.

STEM resources for MYP schools

To help facilitate a better educational experience for teachers and students, the International Baccalaureate® (IB) provides a number of STEM related resources for educators in the Middle Years Programme (MYP).

  • STEM investigations aligned with MYP sciences, mathematics and design assessment criteria: helps teachers develop projects that will work across the mathematics, sciences and design subjects.
  • MYP STEM Interdisciplinary Unit- Nanotechnology (Sciences, Mathematics, Design).
  • Mapping of STEM content and MYP concepts: examples of how teachers can link mathematics and science content to related concepts and possible units that could come of this.
  • Computational thinking: an explanation of how the MYP framework includes opportunities for developing and applying computational thinking.
  • Case studies of STEM projects in MYP schools.

All these documents, teacher support materials and teacher resource exchanges are available from the password protect programme resource centre (PRC).  

School example

By working through projects in the context of a makerspace, students at the Rijnlands Lyceum Sassenheim school in the Netherlands are given the freedom to practise working through the MYP design cycle in a constantly iterative practice to make their projects from conceptual design through to final physical production.

This project was started by the arts teacher as an after-school initiative with only a couple of students and now has five grade 4 MYP students cooperating on a single project. The undertaking focused mainly around students’ art studies; the teacher has allowed students to work on their projects at this space in their free time (and his). The current project undertaken by the students is the building of a powered go-kart from their own blueprints.