AP World History About the Advanced Placement Program (AP) The Advanced Placement Program enables willing and academically prepared students to pursue college-level studies with the opportunity to earn college credit, advanced placement, or both while still in high school. AP Exams are given each year in May. Students who earn a qualifying score on an AP Exam are typically eligible to receive college credit and/or placement into advanced courses in college. Every aspect of AP course and exam development is the result of collaboration between AP teachers and college faculty. They work together to develop AP courses and exams, set scoring standards, and score the exams. College faculty review every AP teachers course syllabus. AP History Program The AP Program offers three history courses: AP European History, AP United States History, and AP World History. All three history courses focus on the development of historical thinking while learning required course content. Themes foster deep analysis by making connections and comparisons across different topics within the course. Each AP History course corresponds to two semesters of a typical introductory college history course. AP World History Course Overview AP World History focuses on developing students abilities to think conceptually about world history from approximately 8000 BCE to the present and apply historical thinking skills as they learn about the past. Five themes of equal importance focusing on the environment, cultures, state-building, economic systems, and social structures provide areas of historical inquiry for investigation throughout the course. AP World History encompasses the history of the fjve major geographical regions of the globe: Africa, the Americas, Asia, Europe, and Oceania, with special focus on historical developments and processes that cross multiple regions.Prerequisite There are no prerequisites for AP World History, although students should be able to read a college-level textbook and write grammatically correct, complete sentences. AP World History Course Content The AP World History course is structured around themes and concepts in six different chronological periods from approximately 8000 BCE to the present: Technological and EnvironmentalTransformations (to c. 600 BCE) Organization and Reorganization of Human Societies (c. 600 BCE to c. 600 CE) Regional andTransregional Interactions (c. 600 CE to c. 1450) Global Interactions (c. 1450 to c. 1750) Industrialization and Global Integration (c. 1750 to c. 1900) Accelerating Global Change and Realignments (c. 1900 to the Present) Within each period, key concepts organize and prioritize historical developments. Themes allow students to make connections and identify patterns and trends over time. Historical thinking skills The historical thinking skills provide opportunities for students to learn to think like historians, most notably to analyze evidence about the past and to create persuasive historical arguments. Focusing on these practices enables teachers to create learning opportunities for students that emphasize the conceptual and interpretive nature of history rather than simply memorization of events in the past. Skill types and examples for each are listed below. Chronological Reasoning Compare causes and/or effects, including between short-term and long-term effects Analyze and evaluate historical patterns of continuity and change over time Connect patterns of continuity and change over time to larger historical processes or themes Analyze and evaluate competing models of periodization of world history Comparison and Contextualization Compare related historical developments and processes across place, time, and/or different societies, or within one society Explain and evaluate multiple and differing perspectives on a given historical phenomenon Explain and evaluate ways in which specifjc historical phenomena, events, or processes connect to broader regional, national, or global processes occurring at the same time Crafting Historical Arguments from Historical Evidence Analyze commonly accepted historical arguments and explain how an argument has been constructed from historical evidence Construct convincing interpretations through analysis of disparate, relevant historical evidence Evaluate and synthesize confmicting historical evidence to construct persuasive historical arguments Analyze features of historical evidence such as audience, purpose, point of view, format, argument, limitations, and context germane to the evidence considered Based on analysis and evaluation of historical evidence, make supportable inferences and draw appropriate conclusions Historical Interpretation and Synthesis Analyze diverse historical interpretations Evaluate how historians perspectives infmuence their interpretations and how models of historical interpret