Humans engage in various forms of social interactions and are selective of their own social partners. In this talk, I will first present data addressing how young children select social partners in their learning and teaching particularly asking what might guide and modulate children’s selection of their learning partners. First, I will demonstrate that children’s selection of their learning partners is not an all-or-none kind of problem. Rather, they seem to be flexible, considering whether someone can be a potentially valuable social partner. Second, children's selective learning and teaching do not show parallel performance. Moreover, their selective learning and teaching are modulated by culture. Next, turning to metacognitive aspects of learning and teaching, I will present data showing that young children’s sensitivity to their own knowledge states is enhanced in social interaction e.g., an informing context. Together, I argue that children’s notion of learning partners is both facilitated and constrained by social and cultural contexts. Finally, I will present preliminary data exploring a developmental precursor to a sensitivity to own uncertainty.