Many educational theoretical approaches to cosmopolitanism tend towards an unconditional appreciation of mobility, diversity and rootlessness. The recent interest of educational philosophy in the rhizome, de-territorialization and diversity contributes to this understanding of cosmopolitanism as movement across a borderless and imperfect world. Without downplaying such insights, this article displaces and de-temporalizes them. It takes the form of a parody of the rhizome to view those insights from a different perspective and make them strike a different pedagogical note.

Whereas research on children’s well-being in education has largely focused on adult perspectives rather than on children’s understandings, recent scholarship argues for a stronger focus on children’s experience and perceptions of their own well-being. Adopting a narrative approach, this article puts children’s stories centre stage as we explore a philosophy of well-being for early childhood in two distant but similar countries, Finland and Aotearoa New Zealand. The article reports on two independent narrative studies (one from Finland, the other from New (...) Zealand) in which children tell about their own well-being. Both studies acknowledge the difficulties in obtaining unfettered access to children’s experiences and emphasize the importance of human connectedness and community in children’s lives. After a brief introduction, the article compares eudaimonic and hedonic conceptualizations of well-being. In keeping with the characteristics of narrative, children’s perspectives form the central core of the text, with tentative observations offered by the author/researchers as they attempt to interpret the embedded context of the children’s narratives. Connections are made between the two philosophical understandings of well-being and some pedagogical considerations about children’s lives. (shrink)