This naturalistic inquiry brought together six education instructors in one small teacher preparation program to explore what happens to educational instructors' praxis when the education instructors use explicit metacognitive modeling to reveal their thinking behind their pedagogical decision-making. The participants, while teaching an educational course to pre-service teachers, revealed their experience in a social constructivist framework. Data collection and analysis emerged from a reflective survey at the beginning of the study, from a discussion board on Blackboard during the quarter, and from a focus group during the last week of the quarter. Results indicated that education instructors perceived that their explicit metacognitive modeling is successful in fostering deep thinking among their pre-service teachers when explicit metacognitive modeling occurred in a dynamic, social, and linguistic framework; when it was intentionally scaffolded into the education classroom; when the education instructors themselves were metacognitively aware; and when they framed their own discussion of their explicit metacognitive modeling in a social constructivist framework that led to meaning-making. The implication was that explicit metacognitive modeling could be used as a tool for education instructors to reveal the complexity behind their pedagogical decision-making. [The dissertation citations contained here are published with the permission of ProQuest LLC. Further reproduction is prohibited without permission. Copies of dissertations may be obtained by Telephone (800) 1-800-521-0600. Web page: http://www.proquest.com/en-US/products/dissertations/individuals.shtml.]