Heterosexist microaggressions, student academic experience and perception of campus climate: Findings from an Italian higher education context

thus negatively impacting on their perception of campus climate, described as not welcoming and inclusive [5,7,10]. Implications Examining the campus climate constitutes an important part of the agenda for higher educa- tion institutions, especially in an era when evidence-based practices are strongly recom- mended in order to achieve ever-higher levels of educational and organizational performance. Differently from US contexts, where assessing campus climate is a consolidated tradition [18], in Italy and in Europe in general, this still remains a challenge. Noteworthy, however, is the great interest of the European Commission in promoting the development and the implemen- tation of innovative methods and practices to foster inclusive learning environments. Within this framework, a consortium of 7 partners from 5 European countries (Italy, Ireland, Slovenia, Greece and Spain) is currently working on the development of a tool (namely, the XENIA Index) that will assist European universities in measuring how inclusive they are and in learn- ing ways to shape the educational experience to be more welcoming and respectful of sexual minorities. Overall, the results from the current study shed light on the importance of considering sub- tle forms of aggression and discrimination when dealing with issues of sexual minority inclu- sivity within campuses. The faculty response to microaggressions on campus appears to play a key role in creating negative perceptions of campus climate for heterosexual and non-hetero-

sexual students. It appears to be crucial for institutions and faculty to consider how they can work to promote and foster a sense of support and respect for all students; these actions improve both heterosexual and sexual minority students’ well-being on campus. Along with enforcing universities’ anti-discrimination policies, including microaggressions as subtle, but harmful forms of discriminations, efforts should be made to increase faculty awareness about the nature of heterosexist environmental microaggressions and their negative consequences on student academic integration. This awareness will allow faculty to address microaggressions when they happen, during class discussions, or in other contexts. Peers can also serve a critical role, and they should be encouraged to intervene when they witness heterosexist microaggres- sions on campus. This action will contribute to the creation of an environment that supports the inclusivity of diversity and fosters a greater sense of belonging to the campus community for all students. Limitations Several limitations of our study must be acknowledged. First, data were collected in a small sample of students, all coming from one higher education institution in Italy. While dealing with campus climate for sexual minorities in Italy represents an important novelty in the scien- tific literature, a more robust investigation that involves large student samples from several universities in Italy is required for the generalization of results. A further sample-related limi-

tation concerns the limited number of LGBQ+ participants, that may have contributed to non-significant effects in the study. Furthermore, the results may have been contaminated by shared variance associated with the use of only students’ self-reports as a measurement method. Also, given the use of a cross-sectional design, we are unable to determine causal rela- tionships between the study’s variables. Moreover, it is important to note that, while signifi- cant, only a limited percentage of campus climate variance was explained by predictors that were considered in this study. A potential explanation for this lower amount of explained vari- ance could be related to the fact that the current study only focused on how frequently students witnessed environmental heterosexist microaggressions on campus, without considering PLOS ONE Heterosexist microaggressions and campus climate PLOS ONE | https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0231580 April 16, 2020 13 / 16