From helicopter to lighthouse: the experiences of a lecturer in equipping first year university physics students to move away from ‘answer making’ towards ‘sense making’

Abstract

This paper outlines the author’s teaching philosophy in terms of an analogy to the contrasting parenting styles of a ‘helicopter parent’ as opposed to a ‘lighthouse parent’. This teaching philosophy grew out of the recognition that the majority of students enter higher education in the author’s context in South Africa as ‘answer makers’. The author uses the theoretical frameworks of Vygotsky and Bruner to inform her attempts to enable the students to make the desired transition to ‘sense makers’. This paper illustrates the analogy and then gives concrete examples of some ways in which the author puts her teaching philosophy into practice in a first-year physics lecture environment.