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When I
first heard that the College Board was going to change the curriculum framework
of the AP World History program I was naturally alarmed. As a teacher who had
taught the course since its inception, I wondered if all the lesson plans I had
painstakingly prepared, test banks I had carefully nurtured, and review
sessions I had meticulously manicured would go by the boards as the Board
attempted to remain fashionably current. After reading the suggested content
changes, I can say that the impact on the way I teach the course will be "no
big deal." While the calendar may get tweaked a bit, and I do not yet know what
the exam in May will look like, based on the content outlines I can say my course
will be business as usual. If anything, the content outline provides a stronger
focus to the subject matter of the course.
The
Historical Thinking Skills envisioned in the new framework (Crafting Historical
Arguments, Assessing Points of View, Chronological Reasoning, Connecting
Historical Developments, Historical Synthesis, Insights about the Past) are not
new ideas but rather concepts I have hoped my students have learned since the
2001-2002 school year. The curriculum framework is also encouraging teachers to
keep asking the questions familiar to all of us who have taught this course
before:
- What
are the significant turning points?
- How
does this fit into the larger global context?
- How
can we determine the value of historical evidence?
- What
does and does not change over time?
- How
can we craft a persuasive argument?
- What
is the best way to periodize history?
In the Achievement Level Descriptors (a device developed to demonstrate the quality of essay writing) we still see the same verbs to discriminate the excellent and good from the average. Words like "synthesize," "critique," and "create" identify the exemplary; "assess," "evaluate," and "analyze" are used to identify the good; average by AP standards uses such descriptors as "define," "identify," and "describe." The progression of difficulty from basic definition to simple analysis to a synthesis of information is the evolution of historical thinking that we want to instill in all of our students.
The
Curriculum Framework has identified five themes. They are very similar to
themes we have seen in the past for this course: Interaction between Humans and
the Environment, Interaction of Culture, State-Building and Conflict, Economic
Systems, and Social Structures. In breaking down each of the themes I came up
with twenty-two different qualifiers for the course, ranging from disease to
gender roles. When looking at the sixteen Free Response Questions (excluding
the DBQs) written since 2002, I found that every one of the qualifiers was used
at least twice and six or more of the qualifiers were needed for at least half
of the questions. Clearly, the new course themes as delineated by the 2011-2012
Curriculum Framework would have helped my students prepare for all of the
previous Free Response Questions.
So,
what changes for me? The Foundations period has been bisected, though
collectively the point value of the period remains the same, and the end of the
penultimate period and the beginning of the last period has changed. This means
I will have to more carefully look at my unit exams. The detailed course content
guide offers greater insight into how to more effectively prepare the students
for the May exam. The Course Framework also suggests the coming of a simplified
world map, something I anxiously await. Though we can never get too comfortable
with our teaching, all in all the changes seem to validate the way I have been
teaching the course.
Charles Hart currently
teaches at Shorecrest High School in St. Petersburg, Florida but has also
taught in the Chicagoland area as well as South Africa, Singapore, Jordan, and
Taiwan. He has been a reader and table leader in World History since the
beginning of the AP offering. He can be contacted at chazhistry@aol.com. |
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