The College Board has announced several revisions to the AP Psychology curriculum that will take effect in the 2024-2025 school year. These changes aim to enhance the course’s rigor and keep it updated with current psychological research.
According to the AP Central website, the College Board made these changes in response to the American Psychology Association (APA) releasing recommendations for introductory psychology courses in 2022.
The course will shift from nine units to five, following the APA’s recommendation to focus content on the “five pillars” of introductory psychology: biological bases of behavior, cognition, development and learning, social psychology and mental and physical health. Additionally, the College Board has narrowed and specified key terms for the course to provide more clarity and highlight the most important concepts.
Junior Adleigh Keating currently takes AP Psychology and enjoyed the content and structure of the course.
“It was very memorization heavy, which played to my strengths because it was easy for me to both memorize, but also connect it back to my life, which I really liked,” Keating said.
The College Board will now categorize AP Psychology as a science class in addition to a social studies class, allowing for more flexibility and credit options. The course now includes new “science practices” that align with those in other AP science courses. These practices include content application, research methods and design, data interpretation and argumentation.
Marisa Del Savio has taught AP Psychology for 19 years and also teaches Positive Psychology, Psychology Journal and Personal Finance. According to Del Savio, the new curriculum aims to prioritize in-depth analysis over surface-level learning.
“The changes are going to shift the focus from pure memorization of content to skill-based learning,” Del Savio said. “[This includes] the ability to analyze a research report, or to synthesize information from multiple articles using psychological concepts.”
There will also be changes to the AP exam, which will take place in May 2025. College Board will now administer the exam digitally for all students. Additionally, there will be fewer multiple-choice questions and each question will have four answer choices instead of five. The current exam includes two free-response questions where students apply AP Psychology terms in a specific context, which will be replaced with one article analysis and one document analysis.
Sophomore Mia McBrady is considering enrolling in AP Psychology next school year and her first impressions regarding the course were positive.
“The class will be more challenging, but not in a bad way,” McBrady said. “That’s definitely what I’m looking for.”
Del Savio is anticipating students’ reactions to the new skills and content in the course. Even though it may be more challenging, she believes students can still be just as successful. She said the changes reflect the scientific nature of psychology.
“I think it’s important to note that it’s really focusing on science,” Del Savio said. “Psychology is a social science, but there is empirical data, and there’s data that supports and refutes certain assumptions we have about human behavior, and that’s something that students will now be exposed to on a much greater level than the past.”
