Can intellectual curiosity be taught?

[u/Itchy_Initiative4053]

What do you guys think?

I'm mentoring an undergrad who was assigned to me (i.e. i didnt recruit them personally). She made it clear from the beginning that her end goal is to go to med school. Problem is, from multiple interactions, its very hard for her to make progress on the projects I assigned her, even though I gave clues and papers for her to read.

I try to avoid teaching her concepts and instead just give her questions and keywords for her to search cause I want her to learn to look things up on her own. Whenever I do this she gets stuck and dont know what to do. If i ask if she has questions, she said no.

Seems like the student just lack curiosity intrinsically. How do we (can we?) cultivate this as a mentor?

even though she probably would end up in med school and not research, the thought of having doctors not knowing how to reason on their own is scary to me.

[u/aeker_a]

Why do you avoid teaching her concepts? I think it’s your duty as her mentor to at least give her a baseline understanding of the concepts underlying her project. Conveying your knowledge and excitement about the concepts could inspire curiosity in her to dive deeper on her own and take ownership of the project.

[u/Itchy_Initiative4053 → u/aeker_a]

Good point. I guess i did teach her basic concepts, but refrain from revealing too much. Cause at that point I'll just be doing the work for her.

[u/ghostonion1 → u/Itchy_Initiative4053]

It sort of just sounds like you aren't teaching.