What are ./ and ../ directories?

Simple question, but I'm not sure where to look and google doesn't respond to periods and slashes. I'm just trying to count the # of files & directories in the current directory (not including subfolders/files) and was trying to differentiate ls -1 | wc -l and ls | wc -l since they seem identical. A site I was looking at said **"Keep in mind that this is also counting the ./ and ../ directories."** regarding the one with ls -1, and I'm not sure if that means it includes the directories before or something (which I don't want), but it didn't seem to do that from testing. Could someone confirm which one of those would be most adequate for counting # of files & directories in the current directory only (not sub) and what they mean by ./ and ../ directories?