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

This chapter in the edited volume Responsible Living - Concepts, Education and Future Perspectives presents a discussion on 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 (‘VALUETOOL’) 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.