ENDORSEMENT OF

THE PENNSYLVANIA FRAMEWORK  

The Keystone State Reading Association and the Pennsylvania Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development are major state associations whose functions include the creation, dissemination, and implementation of important research-based curricular movements.  Because of their mutual interest in literacy and its relation to academic and social development for students in Pennsylvania, both KSRA and PASCD have looked into current theory, research, and promising practices in the teaching and learning of language and literacy.  They believe that their collaborative endorsement of the underlying assumptions of The Pennsylvania Framework represents an important step in designing and improving curriculum and instruction across the Commonwealth.

The Pennsylvania Framework is based on the integration of reading, writing, and speaking across the curriculum and on current research coming not only form the fields of reading and writing, but also on position papers from the Essentials of Education Consortium (1981) --made up of twenty-seven prominent national educational organizations-- about the need for the “development of more interdependent programs in which reading, writing, and oral communication are taught in the context of the subjects, or disciplines.”  In particular, the following underlying assumptions about language, literacy, and learning, on which The Pennsylvania Framework is based, form the foundation for this endorsement.

            I.  The first assumption is that “effective readers, writers, and speakers use language actively and constructively to gain new ideas and insights.”  This means that learning is “meaning making.” involving the interaction of the reader with the text while reading.   

            II.   A second assumption is that language is social, with learning taking place in the context of a community of learners.  Readers, writers, and speakers need meaningful purposes for learning which “emanate from the broader contexts of schools, family, neighborhood, and our national (multi-cultural) environment.”

            III.    The third assumption emphasizes the interrelationships of the language     processes --reading, writing, and speaking.  Each process enhances the others since writers need readers and speakers need listeners.  By the same token, students who read widely learn both about the world and the structure of written language.

            IV.   It may seem unnecessary to say that language learning is a human activity.  This assumption, however, also

implies that as students actively use language, they discover and enhance their own knowledge, individual uniqueness, and belief systems which can lead to a broader understanding of others.

This plan draws attention to processes as well as products of learning.  Teachers need powerful rationales for day-to-day decisions linking theory and practice as they strive to improve language use across the curriculum and beyond the school environment.  The Pennsylvania Framework can be adapted by all educators to help interpret and implement ideas about the interrelationships of language, literacy, teaching, and learning.

                                                                                                                                                1989