Raili Hilden

Raili Hildén holds a position of an associate professor in language didactics. She has extensive experience in various developmental and administrative duties related to subject teacher education in Finland and abroad. Her societal merits cover a range of national and off-shore expert duties including the position of the chair of the Finnish Matriculation Examination Board Language section and second vice-chair of the Examination Board.

Dr. Hildén`s main research interests focus on language assessment as a feedback tool to improve language policies in pursuit of equality at the macro levels of education, as well as to enhance learning of individual students to cope with the challenges of globalization and intercultural encounters.  Dr. Hildén was a prominent agent in designing, developing and implementing the national language curricula and a related application of the Common European Reference scales to Finnish system of general education at the onset of the previous curricular reform in 2003-2004. In 2012- 2014 she directed the national evaluation project of language learning outcomes at the Finnish National Board of Education. 

Dr. Hildén´s research and development activities comprise a number of national and international research and development endeavors aiming at improving language teaching and validity of its assessment. In most of the projects (CEFTrain, JoCiTE, OSKU, LukSuS) Hilden has assumed the role of PI.

As a member of The Finnish Matriculation Examination Board since 2006, and the current chair of its Language Section, Dr. Hildén is  involved in the development of high-stakes language tests as a part of the digitalization of the exam. Therefore, Dr. Hildén has recently targeted her major research effort on developing a computerized test format to enable introducing a test of speaking into the exam. The project DigiTala funded by Academy of Finland and led by Dr. Hildén is dedicated to this aim.

 Because of her longstanding experience as a language teacher, Dr. Hildén has been very active in the field of in-service training and various societal expert duties. Her activities count over 200 events and in-service training courses in Finland and abroad. She has visited and maintained contacts with colleagues e.g. in Sweden (University of Gothenburg), France (University of Sorbonne 3), South Korea, Turkey and and Australia.

 Dr. Hildén regularly attends seminars and conferences related to language teaching and assessment.  Her contribution to the educational and didactic research field consists of ca 70 research or popularized articles alongside with a broad range of textbook materials and didactic guide-books