Making the Invisible Visible: Designing Values-Based Indicators and Tools for Identifying and Closing ‘Value-Action Gaps’

It has often been observed that even when people publicly espouse certain values, they do not inevitably perform the actions or behaviours that one would expect to be associated with these values. This has been termed a ‘value-action gap’. Academic research on the barriers to pro-environmental behaviour has served primarily to highlight the complexity of this area; but a problem-centred approach to learning, led by civil society organizations, has been shown to generate effective solutions. One example is the design and use of values-based indicators—statements that link generic or specific ‘values vocabulary’ to specific real-world referents such as behaviours or perceptions. In this chapter, we discuss the application of values-based indicators for the twofold purpose of reflection (inspiring teaching and learning) and evaluation (guiding organizational development). We first describe the EU-funded project within which values-based indicators were initially developed, and provide an overview of the processes leading to the initial design of a project evaluation toolkit (‘WeValue’) and the evidence of its usefulness for identifying and bridging value-action gaps in civil society organizations providing education for sustainability. The central section of this paper reports on a co-design project to develop a toolkit of values-based indicators for secondary schools, primarily for teaching and learning purposes. Finally, in the discussion section, we suggest a theoretical grounding for the use of values-based indicators to close value-action gaps; identify a new kind of gap that has not previously been described in the literature; and reflect on some of the wider implications of our work.