The story behind our new logo

You might not know this, but the soon to be discontinued logo represented MAPPEN’s original eight concepts and 32 learning sequences. The logo we designed in 2015 represented what MAPPEN was at the time: an online resource for teachers to quickly and easily read and deliver learning sequences. 

Whilst our underlying belief that supporting teachers will have a positive impact on student outcomes has not changed, our approach and offering has. Since 2015, MAPPEN has evolved, and our platform now includes far more than the original 32 concept-based learning sequences - we’ve now added Question-based Investigations (QBIs), subject-based sequences and online learning capability, to ensure MAPPEN supports every teaching approach.

So, while our previous logo (see adjacent) was colourful and unique, it was also busy, impractical for many applications, and represented an outdated concept of MAPPEN. 

We wanted a new logo to be easy to identify, flexible and appealing to everyone in the MAPPEN community - teachers, school leaders, students and parents. But, most importantly, we wanted it to better convey our philosophy, and the strand of MAPPEN’s DNA that sets us apart: inquiry.

Give a student the answer, they can answer a question.

Teach a student to question, they can discover new answers.

There are many situations when explicit teaching is a vital part of curriculum and we need a balanced approach to curriculum design. Teaching questioning skills is time consuming, resource intensive and difficult. This is why MAPPEN exists. Students need to understand why and be able to ask why; they need to be able to Google the answer to a question and develop questions that Google doesn’t have the answer to.

Our mission to provide teachers with exemplary and practical resources has remained unchanged. We believe the most practical and effective approach to improving student outcomes is to provide resources that give teachers the time and energy back to focus on their students and improve their pedagogy.

We hope you like the new logo!

Thank you to Anna for your design skills and advice, and to the rest of the team - Amanda, Monica, Doug, Tim, Tamara, Karen, Rob, and Henry. Thank you to all of the people who have supported MAPPEN for five and half years and to all of the teachers doing an amazing job - there is so much more in development, and we can’t wait to share it!

—Mark Ritterman