Values work alongside competencies to help your students grasp why Education for Sustainability (EfS) matters. When you're designing learning outcomes or assessment strategies, giving values explicit attention creates opportunities for deeper, more transformative learning (Vogel et al., 2023). Unlike knowledge and skills, values can't be directly taught or easily assessed. Yet qualities like empathy, compassion for other people, other life forms, nature and the environment, resilience, responsibility for and self-awareness of the social and environmental impacts of our actions can enable students to put their learning into practice. At LSE, your students might excel at analysing carbon pricing or critiquing environmental agreements yet feel disconnected from these issues personally. However, you might wonder whether higher education can explicitly promote particular values and how this can impact on academic freedom. Vogel et al. (2023) offer a helpful perspective: sustainability can be treated as a foundational principle, while students retain freedom to interpret what it ultimately means for them.
Readiness to act emerges when knowledge, competencies, and values intersect. Vogel et al. (2023) identify a persistent gap between sustainability awareness and action. Without values, knowledge and competencies can remain inert and students might understand the problems but lack the willingness to address them. When you integrate values into your EfS curriculum, you're teaching not just about sustainability, but for it. (Vogel et al., 2023).
Where to Start
-
Designing a new course? Include reflective writing or assessments where students articulate their values and reflect on how they could act upon them.
-
Revising a existing course? Add debates or reflection activities that examine the values underlying sustainability dilemmas.
-
Working at programme level? You can map where values development happens across your curriculum and create opportunities for students to revisit and deepen these reflections throughout their studies, while combining this with extracurricular activities where they put them into action.
An example from LSE: Engaging students in citizen science: Air pollution and outdoor learning. Link to video
Dr Thomas Smith from LSE's Department of Geography and Environment engages students in citizen science - where members of the public participate in scientific research by, for example, collecting data on air pollution. As part of his course Field Methods in Geography & Environment, LSE students monitor air pollution in the places they live, study, and commute. This teaching approach directly connects students' lived experiences with environmental research methods, transforming values into action. Watch Dr Smith discuss the course at LSE Education Symposium 2025.
Further Resources