Francois Victor Tochon

For 20 years, Professor Francois Tochon analyzed how language teachers support deep learning in school settings. He compared novice teachers to experienced teachers and studied how language teachers spontaneously organize the curriculum for classroom activities. He furthered these studies in different language learning settings, such as L1 classrooms, bilingual settings, immersion classes, basic French, and L2 French, English, and Spanish, developing a deep approach for the world language classroom.  At UW, he had the opportunity to implement the deep approach as a model for the new K–12 certification in world language education—a first in the field. He has adapted this model to Turkish as a critical language through a current Title VI grant from the U.S. Department of Education.

The deep approach to language instruction encompasses the social, cultural, demographic, and political characteristics of Turkish language and culture that are neglected or ignored entirely by currently available approaches.