Teaching, learning and motivation are the major concerns for educators. In this article we approach these issues from a Foucauldian power and governance perspective in order to understand that attention is drawn to certain knowledge and values and not others that would be equally possible in a teaching practice. The approach suggests that the relationship between teachers' governance and students' freedom to govern themselves is something that is construed simultaneously in the teaching and learning of specific subject content. This interconnection is illustrated by two teaching sequences, one from science education and one from physical education. By comparing the two teaching sequences it is possible to identify differences and/or similarities between how the relationship between governance and self-governance is staged and thereby which companion meanings are offered. The desirable actions manifested in the teaching practices include which subject knowledge the students should learn, how students ought to act and the kind of people they ought to be. It is shown that self-governance leads to normative patterns in which the good student is constituted as a responsible, self-disciplined, active, thinking and judging individual. This can be seen as an expression of intensified student participation connected to the increasing individualisation in late liberal society, where people in their daily lives are forced to take sides, reflect, participate and make choices.