Despite persistent questions about the nature and purpose of social studies education in the United States, there exists general agreement that social studies should be about democratic citizenship. But much depends on how individuals view democracy, and the extent to which they think it has been, or could be, realized through education. This dimension of social studies education, and, indeed, of education in general, poses unique challenges to those involved in teacher preparation. This study considers some of these challenges as they relate to one relatively unexamined area of teacher education practice--the written feedback provided to student teachers by their university supervisors. While the authors recognized some of the limitations of the locus for their study, they also believed that using a Deweyan perspective to examine their feedback would not only shed useful light on social studies education for democratic citizenship but could also "be extended profitably to every subject in the curriculum". In this article, the authors first provide a brief overview of the conceptions of democratic citizenship education germane to social studies in the U.S. context. Then, they discuss the role of cultural values in influencing educational aims. Next, they detail the objectives of the study and the methods used to analyze the data. Finally, they conclude by presenting their findings and discussing their implications for current practice and future research endeavors in social studies education.