Eighth-grade students were studied to learn how their interpretations of school situations are influenced by behavior and visual space attributes and settings. A variety of studies support the importance of relationships between the person and the learning environment. In this study, it was hypothesized that students would evaluate as more appropriate those situations with similar levels of privacy opportunity and privacy requirements. The students identified settings in their school that were perceived to afford more opportunity for privacy as well as selected behaviors that required more privacy to perform. A four-coordinate grid was then constructed that identified locations affording theoretically high or low levels of privacy in each setting. Finally, the students completed a questionnaire in which they evaluated the appropriateness of performing various behaviors in each setting. The data thus collected indicate that students' appropriateness evaluations are a function of (1) perceived privacy required for or social norms associated with student behavior; (2) potential exposure to visual monitoring of one's behavior by others; and (3) unique visual space-behavior situations produced by settings associated with strong social norms and whose functional elements relate directly to specific behavior. The students' evaluations suggest that visual space attributes and the physical environment are potent variables along with behavior in students' perceptions of their school experiences. Twenty-two references are appended. (GJ)