This open access book is the first of a two-volume series focusing on how people are being enabled or constrained to live well in today’s world, and how to bring into reality a world worth living in for all. The chapters offer unique narratives drawing on the perspectives of diverse groups such as: asylum-seeking and refugee youth in Australia, Finland, Norway and Scotland; young climate activists in Finland; Australian Aboriginal students, parents and community members; families of children who tube feed in Australia; and international research students in Sweden. The chapters reveal not just that different groups have different ideas about a world worth living in, but also show that, through their collaborative research initiative, the authors and their research participants were bringing worlds like these into being. The volume extends an invitation to readers and researchers in education and the social sciences to consider ways to foster education that realises transformed selves and transformed worlds: the good for each person, the good for humankind, and the good for the community of life on the planet. The book also includes theoretical chapters providing the background and rationale behind the notion of education as initiating people into ‘living well in a world worth living in'. An introductory chapter discusses the origins of the concept and the phrase.

The idea of living well, the 'good' life, and the type of world that allows all lifeforms to thrive is not new. Its outlines are visible in many Indigenous knowledges. In the Western tradition, its roots stretch back beyond Aristotle in ancient Greece. This chapter presents the book at hand as a listening project. Through the 13 chapters of the book, we invite the reader to pause, ponder, identify and interpret what 'living well' or a 'world worth living in' means in different contexts and for different groups of people, and how the meaning changes depending on where one stands. Hearing from knowledge holders standing in different positions in the world, our knowledge gets richer. As we listen deeply to all the chapters of the book, we can hear clearly the language of criticism: how educational practices are currently stopping us from living well; and how educational practices are creating a world of inequity and unmet needs. But we can also hear the language of hope: how education is helping us to live well and to live well together-both today and in the future; and how education is supporting us, together, to create a world, day by day and practice by practice, that is worth living in for all.