This paper argues against a view of curriculum as a means for moulding students into, and making teachers accountable for, something pre-determined and singularly governed by qualification demands of the labour market. It makes a case for the value of inter-subjective teacher–student relationships in education and addresses the significance of negotiations and their open-endedness. This paper draws its empirical material from case studies for which interviews were the main source for gathering data. The data analyses were made using the AtlasTi software designed for qualitative analysis. In the empirical material were found instances of negotiations in which inter-subjective relationships are established and maintained; negotiations that are rendered obscured or even invisible from a qualification purpose but that influence the educational processes. The results show that teachers and students creatively use potentials within contextual conditions to attain relationships which sometimes constitute a precondition for education.