'Where do I stand in comparison to others?' is, according to the Flemish minister of Education a central question for everybody concerned with the quality of education (from students up to teachers, schools and policy bodies). In this paper we will try to show how this question becomes also more and more the leading question around which educational sciences evolve and develop (implying that these sciences are totally changing in scope and appearance compared to 'modern' educational sciences which were occupied with questions of progress and destination). We will indicate how this question appears as a meaningful question for people who understand themselves as moving around in environments (instead of inhabiting a society with particular norms, rules and habits). So we can hear and read for example that schools are no longer to be seen as institutions but as stimulating and facilitating learning environments. Of course, it is tempting to conceive of '(learning) environments' as yet another concept to name the habitat of students and human beings in general. However based on a brief mapping of the past and present organisation of time and space in schools, we will make clear that understanding the world as an environment cannot be disconnected from a particular self-understanding.We will elaborate more particularly what it means to move around as 'learners' in a 'learning' environment. In a strict sense, within a learning environment the idea of a (normal) 'position' no longer makes sense. A learner is in movement or involved in a process to accumulate competencies in order to satisfy learning needs. As such, in her unique trajectory the learner is no longer in need of surveillance and normalising instruction but is in need of permanent monitoring, coaching and feedback. Of major concern within a network are no longer localisation nor extensiveness but placement. In an environment one has to know everyone's movements and needs at any moment. This 'environmental' monitoring has a particular aim. The aim is no longer to know oneself as a 'student' in relation to a particular standard/norm, in view of a societal destiny/position and on the basis of a normalising judgement. Self-knowledge instead is about the endless accumulation of learning outcomes and about the in-between 'trade balance' of learning investments. The reference level for this balance is the previous phase in the individual learning process. Therefore, each learner is for herself the biggest competitor, and, being the norm for oneself, everything always can be better or different. Averages and marks can still be useful here, but they have a particular function. Information on averages functions as 'benchmarks' and can inspire and motivate learners in their self-competition: 'where do I stand in comparison to others?' This is where the competitive notions of quality and of 'excellence' enters the scene and where the need for all kinds of 'global positioning knowledge systems' (like PISA, TIMMS -studies) appears.Discourse-analysis and phenomenological mapping In the paper we will show how educational sciences are increasingly understanding themselves as sciences which are in the service of this need of a permanent positioning without end (end taken in its double meaning) and how this contributes to changing the educational field into a field of endless competition, of permanent creation of differences, inequalities and exclusions. Educational sciences, thus, are increasingly part of a government of education which operates through permanent ex/inclusion in the name of quality. Edwards, R. (2002) 'Mobilizing lifelong learning: governmentality in educational practices', Journal of Education Policy 17(3): 353-365.Simons, M. & Masschelein, J. (2007) The governmentalization of learning and the assemblage of a learning apparatus. Educational Theory (in press) Rose, N. (1999) The Powers of Freedom. Reframing Political Thought, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Internation Journal