To effectively help urban pre-service teachers to provide civic education opportunities in their future classrooms, teacher educators should know how urban pre-service teachers themselves conceptualize citizenship and civic engagement. Through the research question--how do urban K-6 pre-service teachers currently enrolled in an urban education teacher certification program at a 4-year university construct key concepts and ideologies about citizenship and civic education?--we examined how 15 pre-service teachers understood these concepts. Using three conceptions of citizenship--personally responsible citizen, participatory citizen, and justice-oriented citizen (Westheimer and Kahne in "Am Educ Res J" 41(2):237-269, 2004)--our analysis demonstrated that urban pre-service teachers' conceptions of their students' lives significantly influenced their ideas about civic education in elementary schools. Although the participating pre-service teachers overwhelmingly promoted personally responsible citizenship, we found the participants to heavily weigh developmentally appropriate practice and classroom context when considering the risks and rewards of promoting justice-oriented citizenship in elementary classrooms.