QUICK LINKS Today's News News releases ISU homepage NEWS RELEASE 09-10-02 Contacts: Brian Hand, College of Education, (250) 213-3216 Cathy Curtis, College of Education, (515) 294-8175 Kevin Brown, News Service, (515) 294-8986 IOWA STATE UNIVERSITY PROFESSOR IS CO-FACILITATOR OF SCIENCE EDUCATION/LITERACY CONFERENCE AMES, Iowa -- An Iowa State University professor of education is co-facilitator of a Sept. 12-15 conference that will set the international agenda for science literacy and education at the K-12 level. Brian Hand, professor of curriculum and instruction at Iowa State, and Larry Yore, a professor of curriculum and instruction at the University of Victoria, British Columbia, Canada, will bring together experts from the sciences, psychology, linguistics, language education and science education, to consider the role of language in working with, reporting and learning science. "The relationship between science and language is critical to scientific literacy in the schools so that people can participate more completely in science, technology, society and environmental issues," Hand said. "Science literacy allows people to make sense out of patterns of events in the natural world, the understanding of the big ideas in science, and the communications to inform and persuade other people to take action." One result of the conference will be the establishment of a research network to study language and science literacy based at Iowa State and including the University of Victoria, the University of Georgia, Athens, and the University of California, Santa Barbara. The U.S. National Science Foundation primarily funded the conference. -30- Ames, Iowa 50011, (515) 294-4111 Published by: University Relations, online@iastate.edu Copyright © 1995-2002, Iowa State University of Science and Technology. All rights reserved.