Safety and Exposure in Transparent School Interiors: Patterned User Perceptions of Glass

Transparency has become a key component of K-12 school architecture, intended to support active learning and foster lively social environments. But transparency’s social affordances are complex. Previous scholarship has demonstrated visibility allows for natural surveillance that may impact vulnerable users differently than their less vulnerable peers. Thus, the interdisciplinary research team surveyed user perceptions of transparent features of non-classroom spaces in a contemporary U.S. middle school building. After determining patterns of perceptions using latent class analyses, variations across classes regarding participant demographics, health, well-being, and family functioning were assessed. We identified three classes of responses. A “multiple affordances” class ( n = 41 parents, 52 children) largely composed of participants unfamiliar with the building, whom perceived both advantages and disadvantages to glass spaces. A “glass is safe” class ( n = 52 parents, 39 children) who appreciated glass spaces as good places to hang out with friends that allowed users to detect potential threats. And a “glass exposes” class ( n = 31 parents, 33 children) who saw few benefits to glass spaces and perceived glass environments as not well protected. The glass exposes class was the most racially diverse, had the lowest family income, and reported comparably worse health, well-being, and family functioning than peers in other classes. To support vulnerable students and families, we recommend designers of secondary schools use a wider variety of levels of enclosure in non-classroom spaces to create more refined anchoring qualities and to offer richer selections of social settings for student interactions during their breaks.