UNC School of Education

>> Cizek, Gregory

Gregory Cizek’s scholarly interests include standard setting, testing policy, classroom assessment and cheating on tests.  He is the author of more than 250 journal articles, book chapters, conference papers and other publications.  His work has been published in journals such as Educational and Psychological Measurement, Educational Researcher, Educational Assessment, Review of Educational Research, Journal of Educational Measurement, Educational Measurement: Issues and Practice, Educational Policy, Phi Delta Kappan, Education Week and elsewhere.  He is a contributor to the Handbook of Classroom Assessment (1998); editor and contributor to the Handbook of Educational Policy (1999) and Setting Performance Standards: Concepts, Methods, and Perspectives (2001); and author of Filling in the Blanks: A Primer on Standardized Testing (1999), Cheating on Tests: How to Do It, Detect It, and Prevent It (1999), Detecting and Preventing Classroom Cheating: Promoting Integrity in Educational Assessment (2003), and Test Anxiety: Addressing the Fear Factor in a High Stakes Environment (with S. Burg, 2005).

 “The most enjoyable aspect of research for me is locating problems that are considered solved, or those for which little work has been done because ‘everyone knows’ the answer,” he says. As an example, he cites research he conducted on the familiar Taxonomy of Educational Objectives popularized by Benjamin Bloom and his associates.  “Popularly, everyone knew about the six cumulative hierarchical levels of cognitive functioning codified by Bloom ─ Knowledge, Comprehension, Application, Analysis, Synthesis, Evaluation. But empirical support for six levels was, we found, essentially non-existent,” Cizek says.  “Our research suggested that, in actuality, two—or at most, three – distinct levels of cognitive functioning can be identified.”

Cizek’s current research focuses on the theoretical foundation of standard setting. He is leading a research project investigating methods and weaknesses in current approaches to test validation.