Nowadays, there is a general excitement about similar yet different topics such as happiness, wellbeing and quality of life (QoL). A variety of approaches in science, policy and practice have emerged in the last three decades and have entered or are entering also the field of education. This appears to be relevant because, while the theoretical and speculative analysis on these themes can be traced back to antiquity – e.g. Aristotle’s Nichomachean Ethics and Epicurus’ Letter to Menoeceus – the policy discourse and scientific investigation of these topics are rather recent and therefore created new issues that need to be investigated in more detail.

One major example in the field of macro institutional policies consists of the so-called Quality of Life movement (Sirgy et al., 2006; Stiglitz, Fitoussi, Durand, 2019) or “Beyond GDP Movement” (Costanza et al., 2014). As the validity of the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) – which has been assumed as the main index to measure variations in the wealth and development of nations since the 1930s (Costanza et al., 2014) – has been recently critiqued, transnational institutions have engaged with developing new indicators to measure both subjective and social wellbeing and quality of life (QoL). Among them there are “The 2009 Commission on the Measurement of Economic Performance and Social Progress” (better known as Stiglitz-Sen-Fitoussi Commission) (Stiglitz et al., 2009), the OECD’s Better Life Initiative (OECD, 2013), the Quality of Life in Europe (Eurostat, 2015), the UN World Happiness Index (Helliwell et al., 2019) and the Sustainable Developing Goals (UN, 2015). These initiatives today form leading narratives and one of the most influential discourses.

Another relevant example refers to the so-called science of happiness or hedonic psychology (Kahneman et al. 1999), which has given rise also to positive psychology, and which constitutes the evidence-based approach to happiness very common in educational policies and initiatives.

The relevance of the happiness discourses is growing and the repercussions for educational systems are yet to be apprehended. Some critics can be found in the work of the philosopher of education Judith Suissa (2008) and others (Francesconi et al., 2022) where authors point out the risk of narrowing the concept of good life to a list of normative indicators that should signal the level of individual and collective happiness, also in schools.

With our project, we aim at clarifying the educational implications of current narratives, proposing a different approach to the good life. Continuing, we present a theoretical pedagogical model for its teaching, responding to the following two questions:

• What is a good life in the view of theoretical discourses and from the educational perspective?
• How can we teach it?

By adopting a theoretical critical approach to quality of life based on systemic and phenomenological pedagogy (Francesconi et al., 2022; Agostini, 2020), we present a critical analysis of the main discourses about quality of life, happiness and wellbeing nowadays available – namely Positive Psychology, QoL movement, Students Wellbeing Pisa Test – pointing out pros and cons of such approaches for education in form of a conceptual map. In particular, we criticize the economic-based approach to quality of life and the scientific evidence-based approach to happiness, including positive psychology. Then, we introduce a theoretical conceptual analysis (Kahn & Zeidler, 2017) to discuss what approach fits best the educational area. Finally, we propose an original approach to teaching the good life at school and remark the differences with other approaches.

Initial results show that within the expanding field of happiness, wellbeing and quality of life, there is a high number of approaches that span from policy to science. What are the strengths and the limitations of such approaches for education? Is there a risk for education to be colonized from other disciplines or can education develop an independent approach to the good life? And what does it mean to teach the good life? With our theoretical conceptual analysis, we describe limits and strengths on the application of these macro discourses to the field of education and attempt to provide an original approach based on phenomenological and pedagogical thinking. The results are relevant for all European educational systems in order to form a reflexive and critical position regarding the power of specific discourses as well as powerful narratives. Moreover, the results can be implemented in and linked to topics such as ethics, moral education, teaching and didactics. In addition, dealing with the good life can provide new narratives that take the European perspective on ethical concepts into account.

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