The Course
The purpose of the AP World History course is to develop greater understanding of the evolution of global processes and contacts, in interaction with different types of human societies. This understanding is advanced through a combination of selective factual knowledge and appropriate analytical skills. The course highlights the nature of changes in international frameworks and their causes and consequences, as well as comparisons among major societies. It will also emphasize relevant factual knowledge used in conjunction with leading interpretive issues and types of historical evidence. The course will also build upon an understanding of cultural, institutional, and technological precedents that, along with geography, set the human stage. Periodization, explicitly discussed, forms an organizing principle for dealing with change and continuity throughout the course. Specific themes will provide further organization to the course, along with consistent attention to contacts among societies that form the core of world history as a field of study.
Themes
AP World History highlights six overarching themes that should receive approximately equal attention throughout the course:
- The dynamics of change and continuity across the world history periods covered in this course, and the causes and processes involved in major changes of these dynamics
- Patterns and effects of interaction among societies and regions: trade, war, diplomacy, and international organizations
- The effects of technology, economics, and demography on people and the environment (population growth and decline, disease, labor systems, manufacturing, migrations, agriculture, weaponry)
- Systems of social structure and gender structure (comparing major features within and among societies, and assessing change and continuity)
- Cultural, intellectual, and religious developments, including interactions among and within societies
- Changes in functions and structures of states and in attitudes toward states and political identities (political culture), including the emergence of the nation-state (types of political organization)
The themes serve throughout the course as unifying threads, helping students to put what is particular about each period or society into a larger framework. The themes also provide ways to make comparisons over time. The interaction of themes and periodization encourage cross-period questions such as "To what extent have civilizations maintained their cultural and political distinctiveness over the time periods the course covers?"; "Compare the justification of social inequality in 1450 with that at the end of the twentieth century"; or "Discuss the changes in international trading systems between 1300 and 1600."
Summary Course Outline for World History
The course begins with "Foundations," setting the historical and geographical context and the world historical patterns that form the basis for future developments. For each part of the course there is an outline of major developments that students are expected to know and be able to use in making comparisons across cultures. These developments and comparisons relate to the six overarching themes previously discussed. The ordering of the developments suggests chronology and depth of coverage. For each period after Foundations, periodization is the first major task: to explain differences from the period just covered and with the period to come. For all periods, major interpretative issues, alternative historical frameworks, and historical debates are included.
* Students who take this course will receive 3 college credits (per term / 6 credits total) via the St. John’s College Extension program.
|
 |
About AP
Science
Humanities
Math
College Now
Download the full AP Course Catalog and Criteria (.doc)
* Denotes college credit granted via the St. John's College Extension Program.
|
