“I did not think it was an effective use of questioning”: Collective critical observation and reflection of social studies pedagogy Ashley Taylor Jaffee a,n , Anand R. Marri b,1 , Jay Shuttleworth c,2 , Thomas Hatch d,3 a James Madison University, 395 South High Street, Memorial Hall 3205D, Harrisonburg, VA 22807, United States b Teachers College, Columbia University, Federal Reserve Bank of New York, 33 Liberty Street, New York, NY 10045, United States c Columbia University, Department of History,1180 Amsterdam Avenue, 413 Fayerweather Hall MC 2527, New York, NY 10027, United States d Teachers College, Columbia University, 525 West 120th Street, Box 110, New York, NY 10027, United States article info Article history: Accepted 24 November 2014 Available online 20 December 2014 Keywords: Social studies education Teacher education Pre-service teacher reflection Multimedia representations of teaching Student teaching practicum Collective observation abstract This study examines how one student teaching seminar employed collective critical observation and reflection of an experienced high school social studies teacher's pedagogy using a multimedia representation of teaching. Pre-service teachers watched this teacher implement two full class lessons and reflections on teaching about freedom of speech. This study's pre-service social studies teachers exhibited a developing ability, through collective observation, to critically reflect on their individual methodological and philo- sophical goals, social studies teaching and learning, and professional and curricular visions in relation to their student teaching experiences and future practice. The study's findings offer implications for how pre-service social studies teachers critically reflect on their practice, while also developing knowledge of learners, subject matter, and teaching social studies. Copyright & 2015, The International Society for the Social Studies. Published by Elsevier, Inc. Introduction As one of the primary purposes of social studies education is to prepare our students to be active and engaged citizens of U.S. democratic society (Thornton, 2008), how can we effectively prepare our pre-service teachers to be theorizers of their practice and actively reflect on how to implement this goal, what it might look like, and why? In offering recommendations for how to prepare “good teachers for every classroom,” the National Academy of Education (NAE) Committee on Teacher Education (2005) has suggested three areas of knowledge pre-service teachers must obtain including: knowledge of learners, understanding of subject matter and skills, and understanding of teaching. Our study attempts to offer a student Contents lists available at ScienceDirect journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/jssr The Journal of Social Studies Research http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jssr.2014.11.004 0885-985X/Copyright & 2015, The International Society for the Social Studies. Published by Elsevier, Inc. n Corresponding author. Tel.: þ1 540 568 5130; fax: þ1 540 568 4550. E-mail addresses: jaffeeat@jmu.edu (A.T. Jaffee), anand.marri@ny.frb.org (A.R. Marri), jms150@columbia.edu (J. Shuttleworth), hatch@tc.edu (T. Hatch). 1 Tel.: þ1 212 720 6141. 2 Tel.: þ1 212 678 3173. 3 Tel.: þ1 212 678 4087. The Journal of Social Studies Research 39 (2015) 135–149