AP African American Studies - Course and Exam Description Notes

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Opposition to Indoctrination

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Contents & Course Structure

  • Acknowledgments.

  • About AP

    • AP Course Development

    • Enrolling Students: Equity and Access

    • Offering AP Courses: The AP Course Audit

    • How the AP Program Is Developed

    • How AP Exams Are Scored

    • Using and Interpreting AP Scores

    • AP Resources and Supports

    • AP Classroom

    • Instructional Model

      • Plan

      • Teach

      • Assess

  • About the AP African American Studies Course

    • Course Goals

    • College Course Equivalent

    • Prerequisites

    • Framework

  • COURSE FRAMEWORK

    • Introduction

    • Anchoring the Course in Sources

    • The Smithsonian Institution and Advanced Placement

    • Course Framework Components

    • Overview

    • Themes

    • Course Framework Conventions

    • AP African American Studies Course Skills

  • Course at a Glance

  • Using the Course Framework

  • UNIT 1 – Origins of the African Diaspora

  • UNIT 2 – Freedom, Enslavement, and Resistance

  • UNIT 3 – The Practice of Freedom

  • UNIT 4 – Movements and Debates

  • FURTHER EXPLORATIONS

  • INSTRUCTIONAL APPROACHES

  • INDIVIDUAL STUDENT PROJECT

  • EXAM INFORMATION

  • SCORING GUIDELINES

Acknowledgements

The Advanced Placement Program acknowledges individuals for their contributions to the development of this course in 2023. Includes a list of names and affiliations of Development Committee members and Additional Contributors.

Advanced Placement Staff

Senior Director, AP African American Studies, Assessment Lead, Project Manager, Director, Product Development and Editorial, Department Head.. also Special Thanks to Association for the Study of African American Life and History Association for the Study of the Worldwide African Diaspora Getty Images, Black History and Culture Collection, Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History, AP African American Studies Ambassadors,Students, teachers, and schools from the 2022-2023 and 2023-2024 AP African American Studies pilots, The Smithsonian Institution.AP partnered with the Smithsonian Institution to expand access to resources that support instruction and enrich student understanding of Black history and culture.

About AP

The Advanced Placement Program enables academically prepared students to pursue college-level studies, earn credit, and advanced placement in high school. AP courses cover 39 subjects with challenging exams. Students learn critical thinking, argumentation, and considering multiple perspectives; taking AP courses demonstrates a challenging curriculum to colleges. AP teachers' syllabi are evaluated and approved by leading college faculty, and AP Exams are developed and scored by college faculty and experienced AP teachers. Over 3,300 institutions worldwide annually receive AP scores, with most four-year colleges granting credit or advanced placement for successful exam scores.

AP Course Development

AP courses and exams align with college-level learning best practices, emphasizing challenging, research-based curricula. Individual teachers design their AP course curriculum, select readings, assignments, and resources, respecting teachers’ time and expertise. This publication presents the course content and skills for the AP Exam, organized into units. The AP Program provides teachers and students with free formative assessments, like Progress Checks, to measure student progress.

Enrolling Students: Equity and Access

The AP Program encourages educators to provide equitable access to all willing and academically prepared students and eliminating barriers that restrict AP participation for students from ethnic, racial, and socioeconomic groups that have been traditionally underserved. All students should have access to academically challenging coursework before enrolling in AP classes in order to prepare them for AP success.

Offering AP Courses: The AP Course Audit

The AP Program supports each school’s own curriculum to develop content understandings and skills described in the course framework and has curricular and resource requirements that must be fulfilled before a school can label a course “Advanced Placement” or “AP.” Schools wishing to offer AP courses must participate in the AP Course Audit, a process where AP teachers’ course materials are reviewed by college faculty. The AP Course Audit form is submitted by the AP teacher and the school principal to confirm understanding of the curricular and resource requirements. A syllabus or course outline is submitted by the AP teacher for review by college faculty. A syllabus or course outline, detailing how course requirements are met, is submitted by the AP teacher for review by college faculty.

How the AP Program Is Developed

The content scope for an AP course and exam is derived from analyzing syllabi and course offerings of colleges and universities. A committee of college faculty and expert AP teachers then articulates what students should know and do, resulting in a course framework that is the blueprint for the AP Exam. AP Test Development Committees develop each AP Exam, aligning questions to the course framework. The AP Exam development process is a multiyear endeavor involving extensive review, revision, piloting, and analysis to ensure accuracy, fairness, validity, and appropriate difficulty. Committee members are selected to represent a variety of perspectives and institutions. Throughout AP course and exam development, feedback is gathered from various stakeholders in secondary schools and higher education.

How AP Exams Are Scored

The exam scoring process relies on the expertise of AP teachers and college faculty. Multiple-choice questions are machine-scored, while free-response questions and performance assessments are scored by college faculty and expert AP teachers, either at the annual AP Reading or online. AP Readers are thoroughly trained. Each subject has a Chief Faculty Consultant who maintains scoring standard accuracy with AP Reader leaders. Free-response and performance assessment scores are weighted, combined with multiple-choice results, and converted to a 1–5 scale. AP Exams are criterion-referenced, not graded on a curve, so every student who meets the criteria for a score of 2, 3, 4, or 5 will receive that score.

Using and Interpreting AP Scores

The extensive work done by college faculty and AP teachers ensures that AP Exam scores accurately represent students’ achievement in the equivalent college course. Research studies establish the validity of AP scores. AP Score Credit Recommendation College Grade Equivalent 5 Extremely well qualified A 4 Well qualified A-, B+, B 3 Qualified B-, C+, C 2 Possibly qualified n/a 1 No recommendation n/a

Colleges and universities set their own credit and placement policies, but most private institutions award credit or advanced placement for AP scores of 3 or higher. Likewise, most states have statewide credit policies that ensure college credit is awarded for scores of 3 or higher at public colleges and universities. To confirm a college’s AP credit/placement policy, a search engine is available at: apstudent.collegeboard.org/creditandplacement/search-credit-policies.

Becoming an AP Reader

Thousands of AP teachers and college faculty members evaluate and score the free-response sections of the AP Exams each June. Benefits include bringing positive changes to the classroom, gaining in-depth understanding of AP Exam and AP scoring standards, compensation and expenses covered, distributed scoring opportunities, and Continuing Education Units (CEUs). To apply, visit collegeboard.org/apreading.

AP Resources and Supports

Teachers and students receive access to classroom resources aligned to the course framework after class selection. AP Classroom is an online platform with a variety of resources and tools for yearlong support.

Sources

Primary sources paired with each topic, available on topic pages for ease of access and instruction.

Unit Guides

Optional planning guides on AP Classroom outline course content and skills, suggest content sequence and pacing, scaffold skill instruction, organize content into topics, and provide AP Exam tips.

Individual Student Project Resources

Individual Student Project Manual includes an instructional guide with day-by-day guidance on supporting students in project completion during Units 3 and 4 or at course end. Additional materials on AP Classroom include a student workbook, teaching materials, and videos to help students develop necessary skills.

Instructional Model

Integrating AP resources can develop student skills and conceptual understandings. The instructional model incorporates resources into the classroom.

Plan

  • Review the Course Framework to identify conceptual understandings and skills for each unit.

  • Use the Unit at a Glance table to identify related topics that build toward a common understanding, and then plan appropriate pacing for students.

Teach

  • Use topic pages in the Course Framework to identify required content.

  • Integrate content with a skill, considering scaffolding.

  • Employ previously identified instructional strategies.

Assess

  • Offer formative assessments to check student understanding and provide just-in-time feedback after teaching each topic.

  • At the end of each unit, create additional practice opportunities that will provide feedback to students in areas where they need to focus.

About the AP African American Studies Course

AP African American Studies is an interdisciplinary course exploring African American experiences through direct engagement with varied sources. Students explore key topics from early African kingdoms to contemporary challenges. The course develops skills across history, literature, visual analysis, and data analysis, emphasizing the diversity of Black communities within the African diaspora.

Course Goals

  • Apply multiple disciplinary lenses to evaluate key concepts, historical developments, and processes shaping Black experiences and debates within African American Studies.

  • Identify intersections of race, gender, and class, and connections between Black communities in the United States and broader African diaspora.

  • Analyze perspectives in texts, data, and visual sources to develop well-supported arguments applied to real-world problems.

  • Demonstrate understanding of African societies' diversity, strength, and global connections before transatlantic slavery.

  • Evaluate political, historical, aesthetic, and transnational contexts of major social movements, including past, present, and future implications.

  • Develop understanding of strategies used by African American communities to represent themselves authentically, promote advancement, and combat inequality locally and abroad.

  • Identify major themes informing literary and artistic traditions of the African diaspora.

  • Describe formalization of African American Studies and new directions as part of ongoing efforts to articulate Black experiences, perspectives, and create a more just and inclusive future.

  • Connect course learning with current events, local interests, and areas for future study.

College Course Equivalent

AP African American Studies equals an introductory college course in African American Studies, Africana Studies, African Diaspora Studies, and Black Studies. This AP course may also fulfill some colleges’ Ethnic Studies requirement. Colleges may award credit for an African American History course.

Prerequisites

There are no prerequisite courses for AP African American Studies. Students should be proficient in reading and writing at the college level.

Framework

The course framework is organized by units and topics describing what students should know and do for college credit or placement and thus what they may be expected to demonstrate on the AP Exam. Required components are the Topics, Sources, Learning Objectives, and Essential Knowledge statements. Schools choose textbooks and readings, develop assignments, lesson plans, activities, and assessments.

Course Framework Components Overview

The course framework provides a description of what students should know and be able to do to qualify for college credit and/or placement, and thus what they may be expected to demonstrate on the AP Exam. The course framework includes the following components: 1 COURSE SKILLS, 2 COURSE CONTENT.

Themes

The themes are broad ideas that run throughout the course like threads Revisiting the themes and applying them in a variety of contexts helps students to develop deeper conceptual understanding. Below are the themes of the course and a brief description of each.

MIGRATION AND THE AFRICAN DIASPORA

  • Migration is a key theme in African American Studies. AP African American Studies explores the role of migration (forced and voluntary) in the development of African diaspora communities and the evolution of African American communities in the United States.

  • The concept of “diaspora” describes the movement and dispersal of a group of people from their place of origin to various, new locations. The concept of the African diaspora refers to communities of African people and their descendants who have relocated beyond the African continent, including the Americas, Europe, and Asia.

  • This concept holds Africa as the point of origin for the shared ancestry of diverse peoples of African descent expression, identities, and political organizing of African Americans in the United States and the broader African diaspora.

INTERSECTIONS OF IDENTITY

  • AP African American Studies examines the interplay of distinct categories of identity (such as race, ethnicity, class, nationality, gender, region, religion, and ability) with each other and within society.

  • African Americans and Black communities throughout the African diaspora are not a monolith, and the course emphasizes the various ways categories of identity operate together to shape individuals’ experiences and perspectives Students should develop the skill of considering how the intersections of identity impact the sources, debates, and historical processes they explore.

CREATIVITY, EXPRESSION, AND THE ARTS

  • AP African American Studies emphasizes creativity, expression, and the arts as a lens for understanding the experiences and contributions of African American communities in the past and present.

  • The course offers students direct encounters with an array of Black art, literature, music, and performance from early African societies through the contemporary moment. Students are encouraged to examine the context and audience of African American forms of expression, particularly their global influence and the ways they have changed over time.

RESISTANCE AND RESILIENCE

  • The themes of resistance and resilience spiral throughout the AP African American Studies course. Each unit highlights a range of methods that African Americans have innovated to resist oppression and assert agency and authenticity politically, economically, culturally, and artistically Students examine examples such as resistance to slavery and the slave trade, the formation of clubs and businesses that advocated for women’s rights and economic empowerment, and movements to preserve and celebrate Black history and cultural traditions forms of resistance and resilience evolve within Black communities in the United States, and in connection to the broader African diaspora.

Course Framework Conventions

  • African was the most common term for people of African descent in the United States from their earliest arrival until the late 1820s.

  • Colored Black Americans continued to shed prescribed naming conventions in favor of self-identification, both individually and collectively. “Colored” became the most prominent group identifier during the nineteenth century.

  • Negro Spanish for “black,” the term “negro” as a racial categorization is rooted in Spanish colonialism. However, in the early twentieth century, its use by African Americans, particularly those in leadership positions, became more common.

  • Black In the 1960s, a younger generation of activists and artists looked to new ways of expressing their identity and pride. “Black” was chosen to signal a shift away from the previous strategies of the Civil Rights movement and to signify a reversal of connotations of Blackness as overwhelmingly negative

  • African American Following the Black Freedom movements of the 1960s and 1970s, Black people in the United States retained the importance of Africa as a point of origin but also sought to emphasize their distinctly American experiences, belonging, and contributions

  • Afro-descendant While the term has existed for several generations, most recently the term “Afro-descendant” is used to refer to any person of African descent, regardless of nationality or ethnic identity.

AP African American Studies skills

AP African American Studies course provides skills that describe what a student should be able to do while exploring course concepts.

The skills are embedded and spiraled throughout the course, providing recurring opportunities for students to develop and practice these skills and then transfer and apply the skills in the Individual Student Project and on the AP Exam. Skill Category 1 Applying Disciplinary Knowledge, Skill Category 2 Source Analysis, and Skill Category 3 Argumentation.

AP African American Studies Course Content

  • UNITS The course content is organized into thematic units. The units have been arranged in a chronological sequence frequently found in many college courses.

  • TOPICS Each unit is composed of topics that focus on the concepts that colleges and universities typically expect students to master to qualify for credit and/or placement. Each topic typically requires 1–2 class periods of instruction. Teachers are not obligated to teach the topics in the suggested sequence listed in each unit. However, to receive authorization to label this course “Advanced Placement,” all topics must be included in the course.

Suggested Course Pacing

Component Approximate number of class periods
Unit 1 18
Unit 2 39
Unit 3 28
Unit 4 30
Further Explorations 5
Individual Student Project* —May 31 deadline 15
Total 135

Course at a Glance

The Course at a Glance provides a useful visual organization of the AP African American Studies curricular components
TEACH COURSE SKILLS The skills are embedded and spiraled throughout the course to develop and practice skills and transfer and apply the skills on the AP Exam 1 Applying Disciplinary Practices 2 Source Analysis 3 Argumentation Assessment