As a leader, I can just tell people literally that: if you can't go away and work independently on a problem, it puts a ceiling on how well you're going to do. Then I ask people what they've tried before asking me.
replyJust being upfront with people can break low performance patterns of behavior.
Perhaps the example should be a homework assignment, not an exam.
replyEven then I would call it bad teaching, as the usual mode is:
replyNew stuff gets explained in class by the teacher - the details are for self study. This is how it was communicated to me in school, so I would call it part of the "contract".
But giving a homework on a fundamental new subject without explicitely telling that this is what it is about, will rightfully confuse, as the normal mode is different.
And when it happened to me, it always happened because the teacher messed up and got confused themself what they had and have not teached before.
Teaching to self study is a valuable skill in itself that should not be taught by accident, but with a clear pedagogic concept.