1 COMMUNICATION SKILLS FOR TEACHING

What role do teachers play when introducing an innovative educational proposal? To ensure that teaching and learning represent the two sides of a single coin or the two sides of any given class is, and always has been, education’s main objective. The possibility of organizing teaching in such a way as to foster better learning has been one of the main premises of education since Comenius (1592-1604). However, when dealing with the organization and execution of such teaching in classrooms we find teachers who may or may not have the skills necessary to communicate with their students, skills that can facilitate or preclude fulfillment of the teaching proposal. Today we clearly understand that any curricular innovation must be accompanied by research that focuses development of said innovation in the classroom and that describes not only the activities proposed for introducing the innovations, but the communication skills that teachers must develop to ensure that their students attain the intended objectives. Science teaching has established itself in recent years as a field of research and theoretic systematization focusing the various facets that characterize science teaching. This conglomeration of knowledge has been lending support for the planning of courses whose proposals would be to lead students to produce significant knowledge regarding not only the content of the scientific disciplines, but also, and more importantly, the construction of science itself. Various researchers have shown that science can be understood as a culture that has its own rules, values and language, and that science teaching and learning should be see