AP Human Geography
Course Syllabus 2021 – 2022
INTRODUCTION: Welcome to AP Human Geography! The purpose of this course is
to introduce you to the systematic study of patterns and processes that have shaped
human understanding, use, and alteration of Earth’s surface. You will employ spatial
concepts and landscape analysis using maps, aerial photos, and satellite images to
examine human social organization and its environmental consequences. You will also
learn about the methods and tools geographers use in their science and practice.
GOALS: On successful completion of the course, students should have developed skills
enabling them to:
1. Use and think about maps and spatial data. Maps and spatial data are
fundamental to the discipline of geography. Students will learn how to use maps
and spatial data to pose and solve problems, to analyze spatial information, and to
think critically about what is revealed in different types of maps.
2. Understand and interpret the implications of associations among phenomena in
places. Students will learn not just to recognize and interpret spatial patterns but
to assess the nature and significance of the relationships among phenomena that
occur in the same place, and to understand how tastes and values, political
regulations, and economic constraints work together to create types of cultural
landscapes.
3. Recognize and interpret at different scales the relationships among patterns and
processes. Geographical analysis requires a sensitivity to scale as a framework
for understanding how events and processes at different scales influence one
another. Students should understand that phenomena they are studying at the
local scale may well be influenced by developments regionally, nationally, or
globally.
4. Define regions and evaluate the regionalization process. Geography is concerned
not simply with describing patterns but with analyzing how they came about and
what they mean. Students should be seeing regions as objects of analysis and
exploration and move beyond simply locating and describing regions to
considering how and why they come into being and what they reveal about the
changing character of the world in which we live.
5. Characterize and analyze changing interconnections among places. At the heart
of a geographical perspective is a concern with the ways in which events and
processes operating in one place can influence those operating in other places.
Students should view places and patterns not in isolation but in terms of their
spatial and functional relationship with other places and patterns.
TOPICS: We will cover the following topics during the year in AP Human Geography:
1. This is Geography
2. Population and health
3. Migration
4. Folk and Popular Culture
