AP Human Geography

Overview

The AP Human Geography course is equivalent to an introductory college-level course in human geography.  The course introduces students to the systematic study of patterns and processes that have shaped human understanding, use, and alteration of Earth’s surface.  Students employ spatial concepts and landscape analysis to examine socioeconomic organization and its environmental consequences.  They also learn about the methods and tools geographers use in their research and applications.  The curriculum reflects the goals of the National Geography Standards (2012).  The AP Human Geography course is organized around seven major topics: Geography: Its Nature and Perspectives, Population and Migration, Cultural Patterns and Processes, Political Organization of Space, Agriculture, Food Production, and Rural Land Use, Industrialization and Economic Development, and Cities and Urban Land Use.

Course Goals

By the end of the course, students should have a more geoliterate, more engaged in contemporary global issues, and more multicultural in their viewpoints.  They should have developed skills in approaching problems geopgrahically, using maps and geospatial technologies, thinking critically about texts and graphic images, interpreting cultural landscapes, and applying geographic concepts such as scale, region, diffusion, interdependence, and spatial interactioni, among others.  Students should see geography as a discipline rellevant to the world in which they live; as a source of ideas for identifying, clarifying, and solving problems at various scales; and as a key component of building global citizenship and environmetal stewardship.