  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.
