An action research project was conducted to promote critically reflective teaching in a semester-long secondary social studies methods course. To encourage critical reflection, the instructor drew explicit attention to issues of rationale building in social studies, critical thinking, democratic education, and social transformation. Evidence of critical reflection was sought in multiple settings, including: interviews conducted with the three case study participants at the start, midpoint, and conclusion of the semester; observations of their class participation; and assignments and other written work collected from participants. Throughout the semester, data were collected that served as evidence of participant deliberation about the ethical and moral basis of their work as teachers, teaching practices informed by this deliberation, and factors that seemed to facilitate and/or inhibit the learning of critically reflective teaching. The results of the study suggested that teacher educators can influence preservice teachers to become more critically reflective, though this work appears to be inhibited by numerous programmatic and psychosocial concerns. Furthermore, while encouraging some amount of critical reflection about teaching appears to be a realistic aim for teachers of preservice secondary social studies teachers, influencing the quality and content of such reflection seems to be the greater challenge. Factors that helped and hindered this effort to promote critically reflective teaching are identified. The course syllabus is appended. (Contains 33 references.) (ND)