This study aims to determine pre-service science teachers' metaconceptual activities about the design of processes to teach science concepts in their pre-active phase. A single-case design was used. The eight pre-service science teachers participated in this study. An activity journal and an instruction process evaluation developed by the researcher and worksheets prepared by the pre-service science teachers were used as data collection tools. An inductive and comparative analysis was used to determine in detail the metaconceptual activities of the participants regarding the design of science concepts teaching practices in the pre-active phase. The main results are that (a) they performed various metaconceptual activities such as awareness, planning, monitoring and evaluation regarding their own learning, their tasks and their task performance, (b) they had a higher tendency to perform metacognitive activities for task and task performance and had a lower tendency to perform metacognitive activities for their own learning, (c) the activities they performed could differ based on science topic. As a suggestion, studies can be conducted to determine their metaconceptual activities in the interactive phase and in the post-active phase and to compare three phases of teaching to give an idea of integrating metacognition into teacher education.