Cognitive-linguistic skills, POE: Predict-Observe-Explain, Models of Scientific Explanation and Electrochemistry.

The study on the linguistic cognitive ability of the explanation has been debated in several perspectives, be it philosophical, epistemological or didactic, and especially the way it is analyzed in the classroom, especially in this dissertation, in science teaching and in higher education in chemistry . Thus, the research was based on the following objective to analyze the students' explanations and the level of coherence of these explanations with the scientific knowledge, for which an experimental activity titled Aluminum Shell was developed, which was modeled according to the teaching strategy P.O.E. (predicting, observing and explaining) using concepts of electrochemistry. Thus the strategy P.O.E. led to the production of a rubric based mainly on the perspectives of the Nominal-Deductive, Hypothetical-Deductive and Inference Models of the Best Explanation, aiming to classify the explanatory statement generated by the students in terms of the coherence and adequacy with the scientific knowledge currently accepted. Therefore, a short course was organized at the Institute of Chemistry of UFRN for the application of the experimental activity and the evaluation of the explanatory statements by the students, which were evaluated according to a referential rubric. With this, it was possible to analyze the students' performance in terms of the coherence of their explanations with the scientific concepts currently accepted.