ABSTRACT
Learning environments should be designed to promote personal and professional growth. Practices contrary to creating classroom environments conducive to learning only serve to thwart students' potential for further intellectual development and achievement. Unfortunately, education continues to be plagued by many of the systemic socio-political and psychological issues that permeate society. Many of these issues negatively and disproportionately impact the academic achievement and mental health of historically marginalized groups. Microaggressions perpetuate a vicious cycle of latent segregation, severely delegitimizing and disadvantaging people who have historically been prevented from access to equal educational opportunities and other mechanisms which facilitate social and economic advancement. The purpose of this conceptual chapter is to explore the factors that contribute to microaggressive behaviour in education with an emphasis on innovative strategies that can and have been used to identify and minimize the practice of microaggression towards historically marginalized groups.
