IBSE Final

128 NaTIoNal SCIENCE TEaChERS aSSoCIaTIoN

Chapter 7 Teaching Science as Inquiry and Developing 21st-Century Skills

Figure 7.1 Trends in Routine and Nonroutine Task Input in the United States Since 1969

Source: Autor, D., F. Levy, and R. J. Murnane. 2003. The skill content of recent technical change. Quarterly Journal of Economics 118 (4): 1279–1333.

Figure 7.1 shows a decline in tasks involving physical work that uses deduc-

tive or inductive rules. The figure also shows a decline in skills involving phys-

ical tasks that cannot be described as following a set of If-Then-Do rules. The

latter has proven extremely difficult for computer programmers. This represents

a decline in manual labor.

Much less attention has been devoted to the significant decline in routine

cognitive task input, involving mental tasks that are well described by logical

rules. Because such tasks can be accomplished by following a set of rules, they

are prime candidates for computerization, and the figure shows, indeed, that

demand for this task category has seen the steepest decline during the recent

decade. Furthermore, rules-based tasks also are easier than other kinds of work

to send to foreign producers. When a task can be reduced to rules—that is, a

standard operating procedure—the process needs to be explained “only once,”

so the process of communicating with foreign producers is much simpler than

the case of non-rules-based tasks where each piece of work is a special case.

By the same token, when a process can be reduced to rules, it is much easier

to monitor the quality of output. All of this highlights an important issue for

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Mean t

ask Input in Percentiles of 1960 t

ask Distribution

1960 1970 1980 1990 2000

Nonroutine analytic Routine cognitive Routine manual

Nonroutine interactive Nonroutine manual