Title
What Does Our Feedback Tell Young Readers? A Design Research Journey inEarly Reading Assessment

Abstract
When a young child reads aloud to a teacher, the teacher's response mayseem like a small, ordinary act. Yet this everyday feedback shapes children'sreading skills, their motivation, sense of agency, and self-image as readers.In this webinar, I will tell the story of a research journey that began with aproblem from my own classroom practice and followed an educational designresearch approach (McKenney & Reeves, 2019).

In my research, I have used systematic reviews as my way of mapping andunderstanding assessment and feedback in the context of early readinginstruction (Grønli et al., 2024, 2026a).The reviews revealed that feedback in early reading is often concentrated ontechnical correction, that it tends to narrow most for the students who mayneed rich feedback the most, and that reading research has made surprisinglylittle use of contemporary feedback and assessment theory. Each of theseinsights, in turn, shaped the next methodological step: co-designing andtesting a research-based tool that helped teachers broaden their assessmentfocus and feedback repertoire (Grønli et al., 2025, 2026b).The tool is now made available to Norwegian primary schools through a nationalreading initiative.

Alongside the findings, I will reflect on the research journey itself —how an everyday classroom problem became a coherent thesis (Grønli, 2025), and the choices and challenges along the way.The webinar concludes with reflections and practical advice from my own journeyinto research, which I hope will be useful for early career researchersbuilding their own paths.

Short Bio
Karianne Megard Grønli is an associate professor at the NorwegianReading Centre, University of Stavanger. Before completing her PhD in 2025, sheworked for more than twenty years as a primary teacher and as a mentor andadvisor for teachers and school leaders. Her research examines teacherfeedback, assessment and student agency in early reading instruction, and herdoctoral work — published in Review of Educational Research, EducationalPsychology Review and Contemporary Educational Psychology — combinedsystematic reviews with design research to develop the Read To Me checklist.She is the recipient of the AEA-Europe Kathleen Tattersall New AssessmentResearcher Award 2026.