CAR aligns with scientific argumentation learning goals of sense-making, articulating, and persuading

Design · All designs
Evidence · no claims cited

Description

The CAR's theoretical grounding integrates key aspects of knowledge building in science, drawing on the framework that scientific explanations are constructed through collaborative argumentation with three underlying goals: sense-making, articulating, and persuading (Berland and Reiser, 2009). The article maps CAR components 1–4 to these goals: "using scientific evidence and general scientific concepts to make sense of the specific phenomena being studied (CAR 1-2), articulating these understandings (CAR 2a), and persuading others of these explanations by using the ideas of science to explicitly connect the evidence to the knowledge claims (CAR 2b-4)." CAR component 5 is described as an extension focusing on providing logical future studies that advance or confirm current research findings.

Design Implications

Context

Requirements

• Students must combine aspects of the Analyze, Conclude, and Communicate petals of the ACE-Bio experimentation competency framework

Constraints

• The CAR also aligns with the PACKS model (Millar et al., 1994), which describes four knowledge frames (engagement, modeling, engineering, scientific) that guide a student's scientific investigation

Target Learners

• undergraduate biology students

Learning Goals

• scientific argumentation
• evidence-based conclusion-making
• sense-making from experimental data

Claims

Related Designs

Examples

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Key Sources

• Cary Tawnya L., Hong Seung M., Kowalkowski Anna, Harris Michelle A. (2026). The Conclusion Assessment Rubric (CAR): A Tool to Evaluate Students' Ability to Make Context-Driven Claims with Appropriate Scope from Experimental Biological Evidence. CBE—Life Sciences Education. https://doi.org/10.1187/cbe.25-11-0255

Page metadata

Field	Value
type	design
id	car-argumentation-alignment-framework
title	CAR aligns with scientific argumentation learning goals of sense-making, articulating, and persuading
description	The CAR's theoretical grounding integrates key aspects of knowledge building in science, drawing on the framework that scientific explanations are constructed through collaborative argumentation with three underlying...
status	review
generated	by process:settle-candidates on 2026-11-04
trust	unverified — no one has confirmed this page's content
sources	1 — cary-tawnya-l-2026

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