Teaching Advanced Placement Human Geography

Abstract

The College Board's decision to add human geography to its Advanced Placement (AP) program is an exciting development for teachers at all levels who are concerned about the state of geographical understanding in North America today. Yet as discussed in an earlier edition of this journal (Murphy 1998), the successful implementation of AP human geography is contingent upon meeting formidable pedagogic challenges. These challenges are the product of the discipline's relatively low profile in many high schools (particularly in the United States), the lack of extensive geographical training on the part of most high school teachers, and the scarcity of good geographical reference materials in many classrooms and libraries.