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This study investigated six-year-old children's metacognitive and self-regulatory processes during task engagement and their relations to children's online metacognitive experiences, particularly feelings of difficulty (FOD). Sixty first graders (57% boys; M age: 6.2 yr., SD = 3 months) were individually interviewed. They were engaged in an ecological and challenging graphic task. Based on C.Ind.Le Coding Scheme, the present study took into account indicators of metacognitive knowledge (i.e., knowledge of persons, tasks and strategies), metacognitive regulation (i.e., planning, monitoring, control and evaluation) and emotional and motivational regulation (i.e., emotional and motivational monitoring and control). Moreover, children's spontaneous comments of FOD were coded. Results showed that the communication of the FOD were significantly associated with the deployment of metacognition and self-regulation, with the exception of planning. The communication of FOD during the task allowed children to mobilize resources and to achieve their goals. Indeed, children who displayed higher evidence of metacognition and self-regulation felt that the task would be difficult but that they would be able to solve it. We discuss the importance of promoting and hearing the children's voices and judgments about their metacognitive experiences to solve the activities in educational contexts.

Dialogical and sociocultural perspectives propose the dialogical self and agency, respectively, as privileged constructs to account for the processes of personal change in education. However, the integrated study between both phenomena has rarely been addressed systematically in education to understand in greater depth how students and teachers construct their identity as learners and teachers. This special issue seeks to contribute to this research gap through the theoretical advances and empirical evidence presented by eight original articles. This introduction identifies the main contributions to education of the developments on the dialogical self and agency and, furthermore, defines the conceptual scopes and implications of their integration. Then, the structure of the special issue is described and a brief summary is presented of the content of the eight articles. Altogether, this issue is an invitation to capture and explain in more detail the originality, innovation and relative autonomy in the activity of students and teachers as they situate and position themselves and participate in educational practices. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]