Why This Matters

You just finished building a real unit in Article 29. Good — but that's one unit, one subject, one week. "Am I actually getting better at this, or did I just get lucky with one topic that happened to fit the framework nicely?" is the honest question underneath the relief of finishing. Without a way to name your own strengths and gaps, professional development happens to you — whatever workshop the school books next — instead of being something you choose deliberately, aimed at the specific place you're actually weak.

Understand the Idea

MyIBHub uses a five-domain competency framework for this self-assessment. Say that plainly: this is our own framework, built for this handbook, not an official IB evaluation instrument — you won't find these five domains named this way in IB documentation, and no coordinator is required to use it. Think of it as a mirror, not a test.

The five domains, and roughly what "strong" looks like in each:

  1. Framework understanding — you know what each planner field is for and why it exists, not just how to fill it in. Strong: you can explain to a new colleague why the SOI comes before the summative, not just that it does.
  2. Conceptual and contextual design — you can choose a key concept and global context that genuinely organise a topic, not just decorate it (Articles 11–13, 26).
  3. Unit design and backward design — you can build a coherent chain from SOI to inquiry questions to summative task without gaps (Articles 14–15, 29).
  4. Inquiry-based teaching practice — in the actual classroom, you can run inquiry without either over-directing (turning inquiry into lecture) or under-directing (turning inquiry into abandonment — Article 28, mistake 9).
  5. Criterion-based assessment practice — you mark consistently against criteria, not a private mental percentage, and your feedback references criterion language students can act on (Article 28, mistake 7).

Rate yourself on each domain using three levels: developing (you can do it with support or a template, but not independently yet), proficient (you can do it independently and reliably), strong (you could teach or mentor someone else in it). For every rating, write one piece of evidence — a specific unit, lesson, or moment, not a feeling. "I think I'm proficient at assessment" is not evidence. "I marked the Article 29 unit's summative against three criteria without needing to adjust the rubric mid-way" is evidence.

🧠 Teacher insight: Almost nobody rates evenly across all five. That's expected, not a problem. The domains draw on genuinely different skills — conceptual design is a planning-desk skill; inquiry-based teaching practice is a live, in-the-room skill. Strong at one doesn't predict strong at the other.

See It in Practice

Two invented teachers, two very different profiles, from the same self-assessment.

Teacher A — strong on design, weaker on assessment. Framework understanding: proficient (can explain the planner logic to others, evidence: mentored a student teacher through it last term). Conceptual and contextual design: strong (evidence: consistently builds SOIs that pass the four-part test on the first or second attempt). Unit design and backward design: strong (evidence: the Article 29 build held together on the first full pass with no major loop-backs). Inquiry-based teaching practice: proficient (evidence: runs inquiry lessons comfortably, occasional over-scaffolding when students struggle). Criterion-based assessment practice: developing (evidence: still converts achievement levels to a mental percentage when reporting to parents, flagged by Article 28's mistake 7). Teacher A's two development priorities: get deliberate practice marking against criteria language only, and observe a colleague's parent-conference approach to reporting without percentage translation.

Teacher B — strong on classroom delivery, weaker on conceptual design. Framework understanding: proficient. Conceptual and contextual design: developing (evidence: SOIs often fail the "arguable" part of the four-part test on the first attempt and need multiple redrafts — similar to Ms. Trần's build log in Article 29, but without the redrafting habit yet in place). Unit design and backward design: developing (evidence: summative tasks sometimes drift from the criteria selected, a version of Article 28's mistake 8). Inquiry-based teaching practice: strong (evidence: consistently runs live inquiry discussions that stay open without collapsing into lecture or drifting into unstructured chat). Criterion-based assessment practice: strong (evidence: marking is fast, consistent, and feedback always references specific criterion strands). Teacher B's two development priorities: dedicated practice on the SOI four-part test using Article 13's method, and a structured pass through Article 26's five quality indicators before finalising the next three units.

Notice: Teacher A and Teacher B would benefit from almost opposite next steps, even though both are competent, functioning MYP teachers. That's the point of naming domains separately rather than rating yourself as generically "good" or "still learning" at MYP as a whole.

⚠️ Common trap: Rating everything "proficient" because it feels fair or modest. Vague self-ratings produce vague development plans. Specific evidence is what makes the rating usable — if you can't produce a specific example for a rating, the rating probably isn't accurate yet.

Apply It

Teacher Activity: Complete your own self-assessment.

  1. For each of the five domains, choose developing, proficient, or strong.
  2. Write one sentence of specific evidence per rating — a real unit, a real lesson, a real moment, ideally referencing work you've actually produced across this handbook (your Article 29 build is a strong evidence source).
  3. Identify your two lowest-confidence domains. These become your two development priorities — not five, not one. Two is enough to be actionable and few enough to actually happen.
  4. For each priority, name which part of MyIBHub's wider content addresses it — for framework understanding or design gaps, revisit Chapters 02–04 directly; for assessment gaps, the assessment deep-dive pathway (named below) goes further than MYP 101 does; for delivery/inquiry-practice gaps, classroom observation and coaching conversations will do more than reading.

Artefact: a five-domain rated profile with evidence notes, two named development priorities, and one next step per priority.

Avoid This

"I rated myself based on how I felt that morning, not on evidence." Symptom: your rating changes depending on your mood, not your actual output. Fix: require one written evidence sentence per domain before finalising any rating.

"I picked five development priorities because I want to improve everywhere at once." Symptom: nothing actually changes because effort is spread too thin. Fix: cap it at two — trust that the framework will still be here next term for the rest.

"I assumed my weakest domain now will always be my weakest domain." Symptom: you stop revisiting the self-assessment after the first pass. Fix: redo this self-assessment roughly once a semester — domains shift as you teach more units, and yesterday's gap can become this year's strength.

Check Yourself

Name your two development priorities right now, out loud or on paper, along with one piece of evidence for each. If you can do that in under a minute, your self-assessment is usable. If you're still unsure which two matter most, revisit the five domains one more time before moving on.

Continue Learning

You've reached the end of MYP 101. It's worth pausing on that.

Back in Article 1, the promise was modest on paper and large in practice: take you from "I can fill in a planner" to "I can make MYP planning decisions, defend them, teach them, and improve them." Thirty articles, five chapters, one full unit built from scratch in Article 29, and a name for ten mistakes you can now catch before they cost you a unit. That's not "I filled in the fields." That's a working mental model — the thing Article 28's mistake 1 named as the difference between teachers who plan by pattern-matching and teachers who plan by understanding why each decision leads to the next.

MYP 101 was deliberately scoped. Several genuinely important parts of MYP practice were left out on purpose, because they deserve their own depth rather than a rushed mention here — they live in separate, deeper MyIBHub pathways:

  • Subject-specific pathways — the criteria detail, task types, and moderation norms specific to your subject group, beyond what a general handbook can responsibly cover.
  • Interdisciplinary Units (IDU) — planning and assessing units that deliberately combine two or more subject groups, with their own planning logic beyond single-subject backward design.
  • Personal Project (or Community Project for younger MYP years) — the extended, student-driven culminating experience, with its own supervision, process-journal, and assessment structure.
  • Service as Action — how meaningful service is planned, supported, and evidenced across the programme, distinct from a single unit's context.
  • MYP eAssessment — the on-screen examination and moderation pathway for schools using it, with its own preparation demands entirely separate from day-to-day unit planning.

None of those are optional extras bolted onto what you've just learned — they're substantial enough to need their own handbooks. What you've built here, though, is the foundation every one of them stands on: you can no longer be handed a syllabus and freeze, because you now have a method.

Take the two development priorities you just named, pick a real unit coming up on your calendar, and go build it — you already know how.

📎 Download: MYP Teacher Self-Assessment (competency rubric + radar-style self-profile template, five domains).
📌 Official source: For the IB's own professional development structure — MYP category 1–3 workshops, the pathway to becoming an MYP examiner or workshop leader — consult the IB's professional development listings directly; MyIBHub's development pathways are a complement to that structure, not a replacement for it.

Thank you for building this far. Go teach the unit.