Designing Malay culture-based social studies e-modules: An exploratory embedded case study of pre-service elementary teachers' critical thinking and pedagogical reasoning

Local cultural knowledge is often marginal in teacher education, although social studies asks learners to interpret identity, institutions, power, and civic life through recognizable social worlds. This study examined how pre-service elementary teachers in Riau, Indonesia, interpreted Malay cultural traditions and translated those interpretations into digital social studies e-modules. The course-based design process was the object of inquiry; critical thinking and pedagogical reasoning were treated as analytically distinct but potentially co-occurring forms of observable reasoning. Guided by an interpretivist epistemology, the study used an exploratory embedded single-case design with 34 pre-service teachers organized into 10 groups. The case covered one semester of an elementary social studies learning development course. Data included eight 90-min non-participant observation sessions spanning cultural interpretation, prototyping, critique, and revision; 10 semi-structured group interviews; 10 final e-modules with worksheets and design notes; and group source records. Reflexive thematic analysis yielded four interrelated themes: movement from cultural description to sociological interpretation; culture as both a design resource and a representational constraint; dialogic inquiry and evidence-based argumentation; and emerging pedagogical reasoning for elementary learners. Cross-source evidence traced how participants interpreted cultural meanings, evaluated claims and sources, justified design choices, and revised learning activities. These observations do not establish longitudinal improvement or causal effectiveness. They clarify how culture-based digital design can make culturally responsive curricular reasoning visible in elementary teacher education.