AP World History
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 between major societies.
The course emphasizes relevant factual knowledge deployed in conjunction
with leading interpretive issues and types of historical evidence. Focused
primarily on the last thousand years of the global experience, the course
builds on an understanding of cultural, institutional, and technological
precedents that, along with geography, set the human stage prior to 1000
C.E. Periodization, explicitly discussed, forms the organizing principle
for dealing with change and continuity from that point to the present.
Specific themes provide further organization to the course, along with
the consistent attention to contacts among societies that form the core
of world history as a field of study.