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