By T.R. Dunlap, February 20, 2015.
As we prepare for the EFC’s upcoming webinar entitled ‘Safe Schools by Design’, we hope to convey the importance of students’ perceptions of safety in the design and improvements of school buildings. Perceptions wield great power over the values and behaviors of individuals and communities, and these modes of thinking affect social processes like education. Fundamentally, perceptions, internalized and expressed, produce social norms and guide behavior.
For our purposes, let’s consider the effects of students’ perception of safety in the process of education and in the context of the education facility. There are a number of articles exploring correlations between students’ perceptions of personal safety and academic achievement (Burdick-Will, 2013), behavior (Watt, 1998), and mental health (Nijs et al., 2014). In short, researchers submit that students’ perceptions of jeopardized safety negatively affect academic progress, increase maladaptive and deviant behavior, and increase types and frequency of mental illnesses. In light of these findings, those concerned with education policy, or any stakeholder for that matter, should consider the importance of providing safe spaces for teaching and learning.
It is theorized that perceptions of the immediate physical environment lend themselves to signaling effects that foster social norms and behavior (Keuschnigg & Wolbring, 2015). Furthermore, the often-cited ‘broken window’ theory holds that the appearance of social disorder creates cultural acceptance and expectation of disorder (Kelling & Wilson, 2012). The implications of ‘broken windows’—a metaphor for any environmental attribute that indicates social dysfunction—are demonstrated in the attitudes and behaviors of participants in relation to the physical environment. For example, if a neighborhood has trash all over the sidewalks, it is more probable that participants in this physical environment will add to the trash, believing that littering is a ‘normal’ behavior in this context. Another example: Perhaps a person believes there is greater risk of violence in another part of town; this person is more likely to act cautiously or even aggressively in that particular physical environment. The attributes of an environment are assessed by the human mind to infer (or even invent) information about the social considerations pertaining to the physical context.
We must be concerned with the signaling effect of the education facility’s physical environment. Inadequately designed and improperly maintained education facilities do no favors in fostering positive social norms and elevating students’ motivation to behave well and succeed. Consider beginning with basic questions: Are rooms dimly lit? Is mold or water damage visible? How can we improve the perceptions of the learning environment? As we prepare for the upcoming training on school safety, we are driven by a desire to convey the importance of altering perceptions, upholding positive social norms, and ensuring students that their facilities are safe and secure places to learn.
References
Burdick-Will, J. (2013). School Violent Crime and Academic Achievement in Chicago. Sociology of Education, 86(4), 343–361.
Kelling, G. L., & Wilson, J. Q. (2012). Broken Windows. Atlantic, 310(4).
Keuschnigg, M., & Wolbring, T. (2015). Disorder, social capital, and norm violation: Three field experiments on the broken windows thesis. Rationality & Society, 27(1), 96–126.
Nijs, M., Bun, C., Tempelaar, W., Wit, N., Burger, H., Plevier, C., & Boks, M. (2014). Perceived School Safety is Strongly Associated with Adolescent Mental Health Problems. Community Mental Health Journal, 50(2), 127–134.
Watt, D. R. (1998). I’m in charge here: Exposure to community violence, perceptions of control, and academic and aggressive outcome in inner-city youth. Retrieved from http://books.google.com/books?id=pqRLAQAAIAAJ
T. R. Dunlap is a research assistant for George Washington University in the Education Facilities Clearinghouse. After having worked as a foreign language educator, he now researches topics relevant to education facilities and their improvements.
