Shaping Community in Online Courses: A Self-Study of Practice in Course Design to Support the Relational

This article focuses on what we learned as online teachers about relational contexts in our online courses using a self-study of teacher education practices methodology. Using the curriculum commonplaces of teacher, learner, subject matter, and milieu, we inquired into the design and implementation of our online courses. A responsive audience at the 2018 international self-study conference moved our work forward. We consider the ways the curriculum commonplaces interact and inform each other. A significant aspect was the shaping of milieu across distance. The ontological basis of Self Study of Teacher Education methodology resides in attention to practice and relationship, which clearly supports a focus on the relational in this online teaching context.