This section presents the historical thinking skills and reasoning processes that students should develop during the AP history courses that form the basis of the tasks on the AP history exams.

Historical Thinking Skills

AP World History addresses six major skills that represent the ways historians think about the past. These skills are considered "habits of mind." That means these are skills that need to be practiced repeatedly until they becomes second nature. 

Skill 1: Developments and Processes

Skill 4: Contextualization
  • Identify a historical concept, development, or process.
  • Explain a historical concept, development, or process.
  • Identify and describe a historical context for a specific historical development or process.
  • Explain how a specific historical development or process is situated within a broader historical context.

Skill 2: Sourcing and Situation

Skill 5: Making Connections
  • Identify a source’s point of view, purpose, historical situation, and/or audience.
  • Explain the point of view, purpose, historical situation, and/or audience of a source.
  • Explain the significance of a source’s point of view, purpose, historical situation, and/or audience, including how these might limit the use(s) of a source.
  • Identify patterns among or connections between historical developments and processes.
  • Explain how a historical development or process relates to another historical development or process.

Skill 3: Claims and Evidence

Skill 6: Argumentation
  • Identify and describe a claim and/or argument in a text-based or non-text-based source.
  • Identify the evidence used in a source to support an argument.
  • Compare the arguments or main ideas of two sources.
  • Explain how claims or evidence support, modify, or refute a source’s argument.
  • Make a historically defensible claim.
  • Support an argument using specific and relevant evidence. Describe specific examples of historically relevant evidence. Explain how specific examples of historically relevant evidence support an argument.
  • Use historical reasoning to explain relationships among pieces of historical evidence.
  • Corroborate, qualify, or modify an argument using diverse and alternative evidence in order to develop a complex argument.

Historical Reasoning Processes

Reasoning processes describe the cognitive operations that students will be required to apply when engaging with the historical thinking skills on the AP Exam. The reasoning processes ultimately represent the way practitioners think in the discipline.