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Valuing Student Ideas Morally, Instrumentally, and Intellectually

The importance of valuing student ideas in science education stands on firm empirical, theoretical, and moral grounds. However, the reasons for which one might value student ideas are often not explicitly distinguished, even if implicit distinctions are made in the literature. In this paper, I define and distinguish between three ways of valuing student ideas: moral, instrumental, and intellectual. I demonstrate that novice teachers in the Seattle Pacific University (SPU) Learning Assistant (LA) Program instantiate all three ways of valuing student ideas. Not only this, over the course of their participation in the LA Program, novice teachers shift from foregrounding the moral and instrumental value of student ideas toward highlighting their intellectual value.