PYP Concept Based Learning: From Topics to Transfer

Ask a PYP teacher what the current unit is about.

“The unit is about water.”

That tells you the topic.

“We are exploring how systems change when a resource they depend on becomes scarce.”

That tells you the conceptual understanding the class is trying to build.

The difference looks small on a planner. In the classroom, it can change the entire unit.

A topic gives learners something to study. A concept gives them an idea to think with.

Water can lead to useful lessons on the water cycle, evaporation, conservation, rivers and access to clean water. All of that knowledge matters. But if the learning finishes with water, students may leave knowing more about one context without necessarily understanding an idea they can use somewhere else.

A concept driven unit keeps the content but asks for something more.

What changes when a resource becomes scarce?

How do systems respond to disruption?

Who gains responsibility when access becomes unequal?

Now water becomes one context for investigating change, systems, connection and responsibility. Later, the same understanding can be examined through food supply, energy, ecosystems, migration or a community facing disruption.

That movement from one context to another is at the heart of conceptual learning.

What Concept Driven Learning Means in the PYP

The current PYP curriculum framework describes the programme as transdisciplinary, inquiry based and student centred, with conceptual understanding at its core. The IB says the framework supports:

“authentic conceptual inquiry based learning”

that is engaging, significant, challenging and relevant.

The PYP does not ask teachers to choose between knowledge and concepts.

It asks learners to build knowledge, conceptual understandings, skills and learner profile attributes as a connected whole. The programme deliberately takes learning between, across and beyond traditional subject boundaries.

An IB commissioned research review describes concepts as:

“broad, abstract, timeless and universal.”

The same research found that concept based teaching supports the generation of ideas and “the transfer of knowledge and skills.”

That is why water and change play different roles.

Water is a context with specific content.

Change is an idea learners can encounter through water, habitats, relationships, materials, communities, economies and many other contexts.

The topic provides the evidence.

The concept helps learners make sense of it.

Topics Are Not the Problem

Concept driven planning is sometimes misunderstood as a rejection of factual knowledge.

It is not.

Students cannot develop a meaningful understanding of scarcity without knowing what is becoming scarce, why supply changes, who depends on it and what consequences follow.

They cannot understand adaptation in ecosystems without knowing something about organisms and environments.

They cannot explore perspective in history without knowing what happened and whose experiences they are examining.

The IB research review is explicit that both facts and concepts are essential. It also found that students learn concepts most effectively when those concepts are situated inside a meaningful domain of knowledge and authentic problems rather than presented as isolated abstractions.

So the better distinction is not:

Facts or concepts

It is:

Facts collected as an endpoint or facts used to build understanding

A concept gives factual knowledge somewhere to go.

Topic Driven and Concept Driven Units Look Different

Consider a PYP unit using water as its context.

Planning decision	Topic driven approach	Concept driven approach
Starting point	Water	Change and systems
Main question	What is the water cycle?	How do systems respond when a resource becomes limited?
Knowledge	Evaporation, condensation, rainfall, conservation	The same factual knowledge, selected because it helps explain a larger relationship
Student thinking	Identify, describe, remember	Explain, connect, compare, predict, generalize
Possible assessment	Label the water cycle and explain conservation	Explain how scarcity changes a system, then apply the understanding to another context
Transfer	Mostly remains with water	Can be tested through food, energy, habitats or communities

The concept driven unit has not removed water.

It has changed water from the destination into the vehicle.

The Real Goal Is Transfer

One of the strongest reasons to plan conceptually is transfer.

A student may correctly explain what happened in one investigation while still being unable to recognise the same underlying relationship elsewhere.

Conceptual understanding becomes more visible when the learner encounters a different context and says, in effect:

“I have seen this pattern before.”

The IB research on concept based teaching notes that children’s understandings often remain tied to the context in which they were learned unless teachers deliberately prompt students to generalize across situations. It recommends asking learners to identify examples, consider counterexamples, develop generalizations and apply those generalizations to other knowledge.

This makes transfer something teachers can design for rather than simply hope will happen.

Imagine students have investigated water scarcity.

A transfer task might introduce an electricity shortage in a city.

Students have never studied that exact case.

They could still ask:

What does this system depend on?

What changed?

Which parts of the system were affected?

How did different groups respond?

Who became responsible for making decisions?

Which responses helped the system adapt?

If students can use their earlier conceptual understanding to reason through the new case, the unit has travelled beyond water.

A Concept Is More Than a Word in the Planner

Writing Change in the concept field does not automatically make a unit concept driven.

Change by itself is extremely broad.

The useful planning work begins when teachers ask what they want learners to understand about change.

For example:

Concept: Change

Topic: Water scarcity

Possible conceptual understanding: Scarcity can change how systems allocate resources and distribute responsibility.

That sentence contains a relationship between ideas.

Students can investigate it.

They can disagree with it.

They can find examples and counterexamples.

They can refine it.

Most importantly, they can test whether it applies somewhere else.

This is why strong central ideas matter. A central idea should do more than name the content being covered. It should give the inquiry a conceptual relationship worth investigating.

The current PYP model includes specified concepts such as form, function, causation, change, connection, perspective and responsibility, alongside additional concepts that schools may use to support an inquiry.

The objective is not to squeeze as many concepts as possible into one unit. It is to select the concepts that genuinely help learners understand the central idea.

Try the Topic Removal Test

The original Koncepts post offers a useful planning question:

“If you removed the topic entirely and kept the concept, would the inquiry still hold?”

Take volcanoes.

“Learning about volcanoes” cannot exist without volcanoes.

“Systems change when pressure builds” can be explored through volcanoes, weather, social systems and other contexts.

The test reveals whether the unit contains an idea larger than its content.

There is one important qualification.

Teachers should not literally remove the context from instruction. Conceptual learning needs rich examples and disciplinary knowledge. The purpose of the test is to check whether the understanding can survive a change of context.

A stronger version of the question is:

Could students use the understanding built in this unit to explain something they have not been taught directly?

If yes, the concept is probably doing meaningful work.

Build Questions at Three Levels

A concept driven inquiry still needs factual questions.

What changes is what happens after those questions are answered.

Using the water example:

Factual question

Where does our school’s water come from?

Conceptual question

How does limited access to a resource change the way a system works?

Transfer question

Would the same relationship appear if the scarce resource were electricity, food or space?

The factual question supplies information.

The conceptual question asks learners to identify a relationship.

The transfer question tests whether that relationship has become portable.

Teachers can use the same progression throughout a PYP unit:

1. What is happening?

2. Why is it happening?

3. What relationship or pattern can we see?

4. Where else might this relationship apply?

5. Where might it not apply?

6. What new situation could test our understanding?

The final two questions are particularly important. Counterexamples keep students from forming simplistic generalizations.

Central Ideas and Lines of Inquiry Should Work Together

A strong PYP unit does not begin with a concept and then forget it once activities are planned.

The conceptual direction should remain visible through the central idea, lines of inquiry, student questions, learning experiences and assessment.

For a water scarcity inquiry, that might look like this:

Central idea

Resource scarcity can change how systems operate and how responsibility is shared.

Lines of inquiry

How systems depend on resources

Causes and consequences of resource scarcity

Ways communities respond to limited resources

Responsibility within shared systems

The science of the water cycle can now enter because students need it to understand supply.

Mathematics can enter through consumption data.

Social studies can enter through infrastructure and access.

Language can enter through interviews, argument and communication.

The subjects have not disappeared. They are contributing different forms of knowledge to the same conceptual inquiry.

That is consistent with the PYP transdisciplinary model, where subjects remain important but learners explore ideas and real world problems beyond individual subject boundaries.

Assessment Should Reveal Conceptual Understanding

If the unit is concept driven but the assessment only asks students to recall facts, teachers cannot see whether transfer occurred.

A student who can label the water cycle has demonstrated useful knowledge.

A student who can use that knowledge to explain why reduced rainfall affects households, agriculture and infrastructure has demonstrated a deeper relationship.

A student who can then analyse a different resource system has begun to demonstrate transfer.

An IB research review recommends using more than one form of assessment when investigating conceptual understanding. It highlights student explanation, guided questioning, graphic representations, concept maps and changes in learners’ explanations over time as useful windows into thinking.

One practical assessment sequence is:

Context one

Explain what happened in the water system.

Concept

State the relationship you think the evidence reveals.

Context two

Apply that relationship to a different system.

Reflection

Explain where the relationship worked and where it needed to be revised.

That final step matters because conceptual understanding is not simply repeating a generalization taught by the teacher.

Students should be able to refine the generalization when new evidence complicates it.

Five Questions for the Next PYP Planning Meeting

Before finalising a unit, ask:

1. What is the topic and what is the concept?

2. What do we want students to understand about that concept?

3. Which factual knowledge is necessary to build that understanding?

4. Where will students encounter the same concept in a different context?

5. What assessment will show whether they can transfer the understanding?

If a team can answer all five clearly, the unit is more likely to stay concept driven once teaching begins.

If most of the planning conversation is still about activities, resources and facts, the concept may be present on the planner without actually driving the learning.

Common Signs a Unit Is Still Topic Driven

A beautiful planner can still hide a topic driven unit.

Watch for these signs:

The central idea simply restates the topic.

Every student question begins and ends with the same context.

Learning experiences accumulate facts but rarely ask students to connect them.

Concept vocabulary appears in the planner but not in classroom dialogue.

The summative task rewards recall of the unit content without transfer.

Students can describe what they learned but cannot explain the larger relationship.

The solution is not to make the unit more abstract.

It is to create stronger movement between evidence and ideas.

How Koncepts Supports Concept Driven PYP Planning

Koncepts is built around the premise that IB learning should move beyond facts towards conceptual understanding. Its PYP workspace begins with the school’s own Programme of Inquiry, central idea and lines of inquiry, then carries that context into notes, lessons, presentations and assessment.

The [Koncepts PYP teacher workspace] can be explored here. Koncepts PYP teacher tools

The [PYP Inquiry Studio] creates provocations, thinking routines and graphic organisers around an existing central idea rather than generating disconnected activities. Teachers remain responsible for reviewing, editing and approving the learning experience.

Explore the PYP Inquiry Studio

For a wider planning structure, the Koncepts PYP Unit of Inquiry Planning Guide connects the central idea, lines of inquiry, concepts, assessment and student agency.

Read the PYP Unit of Inquiry Planning Guide

Teachers working on reflection can also use the Koncepts guide to building meaningful PYP reflection so that students identify changes in understanding while the inquiry is still developing.

Read the PYP Reflection Guide

Frequently Asked Questions

What is concept based learning in the PYP?

Concept based learning uses significant ideas and relationships to organise factual knowledge. Learners investigate concepts through meaningful contexts, develop generalizations and apply their understanding beyond the original example. The PYP describes its learning model as both inquiry based and concept driven.

What is the difference between a topic and a concept?

A topic identifies the subject matter being studied, such as water, volcanoes or migration. A concept is a broader idea such as change, connection, causation or responsibility that can help learners make sense of many different contexts.

Does concept driven teaching mean facts are less important?

No. Facts provide the evidence learners need to build, test and revise conceptual understanding. IB research on concept based learning identifies facts and concepts as essential elements of curriculum.

How can teachers tell whether students understand a concept?

Ask students to explain relationships, justify them with evidence and apply them in a context they were not directly taught. If understanding disappears when the familiar topic changes, more work on transfer may be needed.

Should every PYP unit use the same concepts?

No. Concepts should be chosen because they genuinely help students investigate the central idea. The current PYP framework identifies specified concepts while also allowing additional concepts appropriate to the inquiry.

The Topic Gives You Content. The Concept Gives It Somewhere to Go.

Students need facts.

They need vocabulary, examples, experiences, data, stories and disciplinary knowledge.

But facts become more powerful when learners can organise them into ideas that survive beyond one unit.

Water eventually leaves the timetable.

Change does not.

A learner who understands how scarcity can reshape a system can carry that idea into science, economics, geography, history and everyday life.

That is the purpose of concept driven PYP learning.

The final question for a planning meeting is therefore not simply:

What are we teaching?

It is:

What will students understand here that they can still use somewhere else?

Sources and Further Reading

1. International Baccalaureate, PYP Curriculum Framework. Read the IB PYP Curriculum Framework

2. International Baccalaureate, How the PYP Works. Read How the PYP Works

3. International Baccalaureate Research, Concept Based Teaching and Learning Across IB Programmes. Read the research overview

4. International Baccalaureate, PYP Learning and Teaching. Read PYP Learning and Teaching

5. International Baccalaureate, PYP and MYP Alignment With India’s NEP and NCF.

6. Koncepts PYP Teacher Tools. Explore Koncepts for PYP teachers