For many generations, Scottish schooling was based on an underlying assumption that most children were naturally reluctant to learn and therefore required extrinsic forms of motivation. This led to the establishment of discipline systems based mainly on punishments and sanctions. Corporal, or physical, punishment was abolished in Scotland as recently as 1979.
Since the 1980s, greater emphasis has been placed on systems of positive discipline. Whilst this was also based on extrinsic motivation, the emphasis was mainly on rewards and positive incentives rather than on punishments and sanctions.
Although extrinsic motivation has been used in our education system for many years, there is evidence to show that far from encouraging learning, it actually undermines it. Extrinsic motivation identifies goals and offers incentives and rewards for achieving them. Since learners want to get the rewards, they are willing to engage in the learning activities. This usually means, however, that young people learn to see the knowledge the teacher wishes to convey as a way to get the reward, rather than something interesting to pursue for its own sake. They do not view it as something useful in its own right, so they do not question or evaluate what they are learning. Once the prize has been achieved, young people no longer have any motivation to retain what they have learned. Extrinsic motivation therefore, does not promote deeper or meta-level learning.