Sentinel indicators as interpretive tools: The sentinel indicator interpretation model (SIIM) for environmental education

Environmental professionals increasingly work in contexts characterised by uncertainty, partial visibility, and competing forms of environmental evidence. Although environmental education has increasingly emphasised systems thinking, sustainability competencies, and reasoning under uncertainty, comparatively less attention has been paid to how interpretive judgement is explicitly taught when evidence is partial, selective, and contested. This paper introduces the Sentinel Indicator Interpretation Model (SIIM) as a conceptual and pedagogical scaffold for making interpretive environmental reasoning more explicit. SIIM reconceptualises sentinel indicators as interpretive tools through which environmental knowledge is constructed and environmental visibility is shaped. The model extends existing environmental education frameworks by foregrounding selective visibility, knowledge partiality, and the reconciliation of competing evidence as central features of professional reasoning. The paper contributes a conceptual framework that makes indicator interpretation an explicit object of learning and supports graduates to exercise defensible professional judgement in complex socio-ecological contexts across diverse environmental and sustainability practice settings.