MapReduce is a programming model used for processing large datasets in a distributed computing environment. It consists of two main tasks - the Map task which converts input data into intermediate key-value pairs, and the Reduce task which combines these intermediate pairs into a smaller set of output pairs. The MapReduce framework operates on input and output in the form of key-value pairs, with the keys and values implemented as serializable Java objects. It divides jobs into map and reduce tasks executed in parallel on a cluster, with a JobTracker coordinating task assignment and tracking progress.