In this article we examine preservice teachers' ideas about the role of multicultural citizenship education in social studies classrooms. We use qualitative techniques to explore data collected from observations and interviews with preservice teachers enrolled in a secondary social studies methods course. The findings suggest that even when teacher education programs are designed around goals of promoting multicultural citizenship education, preservice teachers' pre-existing and emerging ideas about social studies content and classrooms can limit their thinking and practice with transformative social studies pedagogy. (Contains 3 notes.)