What is a H.O.T .Moment?

The acronym H.O.T. refers to moments that are Heated, Offensive, and/or Tense. The term “hot" moments is often used as a catch all term for challenging or difficult interactions. In educational settings involving interactions among students, educators, and host nationals, H.O.T. moments provide a resource for educators to use to critically appraise a situation and align their responses with the context.

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H.O.T. Moments - The Basics

Considerations for applying H.O.T. moments in Education Abroad

Recognize the cultural specificity of H.O.T. moments and be prepared to adapt when needed. 
The concept of H.O.T. moments was developed to address classroom teaching issues in the U.S. Learning spaces in Education Abroad (EA) transcend traditional concepts of the "classroom." EA occurs in both formal and informal settings and context matters. While HOT moments can be applied or adapted to most learning settings, it is essential to be prepared to modify or adapt.  

Seek opportunities to supplement H.O.T. moments with comparative analogies relevant to the host culture(s) where possible. 
When working in other linguistic and cultural settings, there may be other culturally specific metaphors or imagery that can be called upon to help learners, onsite staff, educators and partners to reflect and unpack concepts like conflict and disagreement. Inviting comparative language, imagery, and frameworks may serve as a bridge to engage with tense moments from a comparative stance. ​

​What Kind of H.O.T. Moment is it?

The three types of H.O.T. moments are described below. Note that the categories are not mutually exclusive and there may be times that they overlap.

• Heated moments can be characterized by yelling, accusations, or name-calling. In these moments, it is immediately clear that something has gone wrong and there is a rupture in the relationship among the individuals/groups involved. 
• Offensive moments are when something offensive has been expressed through words or actions. Perhaps someone has used a racial or ethnic slur about a group or individual; perhaps a student wore a piece of clothing or jewelry that expresses a political or religious view others in the group find objectionable; alternatively, perhaps a local tour operative cracks a culturally inappropriate joke at the expense of a particular group during a cultural outing. These moments can escalate and morph into heated moments. If left unaddressed or unacknowledged, it is possible that those offended may sit silently or withdraw. They may not speak up during outings, may fail to respond to email, participate in activities, etc.​
• Tense moments may be difficult to address or identify. There is no single moment of explosion or reaction, but it is clear that something has shifted. The sources of tension could be internal to the program or individuals within it and show up as moments when the table goes silent after a comment or remark has been made, or students are uncomfortable with a presenter or tour guide. In addition, tensions may be influenced by events, factors and forces that appear beyond the scope of the program.​

Know Yourself

Part of our role as educators is to create conditions that 1) challenge and support learners in their adjustment to a new culture and, 2) aid them in working toward managing this process on their own (intercultural maturity, self-regulation).

To foster these conditions, we need to prepare ourselves too. Like our students, we can experience strong emotions and/or be the source of a HOT moment. 

• We cannot prepare for or foresee every possible contingency, but we can prepare ourselves to suspend judgement and manage our emotional states to respond when the unexpected occurs while on a program.   
• Reflect on your prior experiences with H.O.T. moments in your own life and teaching. Invest time to understand what your own blind spots, cultural conditioning, and implicit biases are, as well as conditions that might spark a triggering event for you - a necessary part of improving your ability to manage your emotions. Investing in this work and how you show up across different phases of the program, in different cultural contexts, settings, and interactions with students will impact how you handle HOT moments in real time.​
• Prioritize holding time in your calendar for this work before, during, and after the program. It is easy to be consumed by the logistics associated with EA programs. When H.O.T. moments happen in the classroom or in the community, students will look to you for guidance and modelling. Remember, this work is not the "nice to do" work, it is the "need to do" work.

​Practice: Questions for Reflection

When preparing for the possibility of HOT moments, it can be helpful  to reflect on your past experiences with similar situations: 

• What sparked the HOT moment in your course/program (e.g., your own biases or assumptions, a community incident or geopolitical crisis, a particular course element, racial battle fatigue, student disengagement, an encounter with a host national)? (refer list of triggers in Obear, 2017)
• How did you respond (or not respond) in the moment? 
• What impact did your response have on the course/program, student engagement and learning, relationships with local partners and organizations? 
• What might you do differently going forward? ​

Practice: Go Deeper

Obear, C. (2017). Facilitating Difficult Dialogues: Navigating Triggering Events. 

• This resource provides an introduction to triggers and triggering event cycle as well as worksheets and guidance that can be used both for the facilitator and participants.  
  

Brookfield, S. & Hess, M.E. (2021). Preparing to Embrace Discomfort (Videoclip)

• This resource provides a short intro into the questions that facilitators face in preparing for highly charged conversations. While taken from a book dedicated to white, anti-racist work in education, the tactics and techniques referenced are applicable and adaptable to other issues, settings and conversations. See also, Imperfectly or Not All | The Importance of Stories. ​

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Navigating H.O.T. Moments

Anticipate & Prepare for H.O.T. Moments

​In addition to understanding what can set off your own emotional responses, there are other ways you can prepare yourself and learners on your program.

• Be aware of your home institution's policy on free speech, as well as policies and laws in play at your program's destination. 
• Seek guidance from EA professionals and others at your institution and your destination(s) as part of program development.
  • Policies, rules, and laws governing freedom of expression. Campus policies on freedom of expression vary and have come under increasing attack. It is important to be aware of them as well as what the policies and laws are regarding free expression in the host nation(s) where students will be. Ask EA professionals at your institution, and where relevant, program provider organizations, about:
    • Is there standard language you can use in the syllabus?
    • How do the laws, policies & local norms align with or differ from yours? 
    • How they approach acrimony, incivility and conflict in practice? 
    • Whose understanding/policies will take precedence? 
    • How much authority and autonomy do you have as the program director?
    • Institutional policies and local laws can impact you and your students in formal and informal learning settings.  
    • ​Recognize that individuals on site might have different levels of autonomy, authority and standpoints on these issues even when associated with an organization/institution (ex. onsite faculty, host families, internship supervisor, etc.). 
• Perceptions and expectations of teaching and learning vary across culture, geography, institution, fields and profession. This includes variation in how conflict is understood and expectations for how faculty and students are expected to act. Consider how you might use H.O.T. moments to create opportunities for conversations about variations in how faculty, staff and partners may conceive of, interpret and respond to conflict, authority, diversity, equity & inclusion. You might apply this to:
  • Predeparture and onsite orientations with students to help them prepare for engagement with faculty and institutions abroad as contrasted with those at their home institution.
  • Professional development sessions with on-site faculty, host families & staff peers involved with your program as advisors, mentors or supervisors. 
• Know your students. A one-size-fits-all approach will not be successful. U.S. students studying abroad carry a range of social identities into the study abroad experience that can impact what can ignite a H.O.T. moment in them and how their varying capacity to respond in a given circumstance.
  • What is the demographic make-up of students at your institution? 
  • Whose experiences and interests are centered or distanced in the program based on the destination, norms and content of the course?
• The Forum's Guidelines for Short-Term Study Abroad can be a useful reference as you plan. Also, check out the resources on resource page devoted to equity, diversity, and inclusion.​​
• Sensitize students to their comparative rights and responsibilities in relation to speech and expression. 
  • Include statements on this topic in program materials, and include discussion of this information during advising, pre-departure orientation, and reinforce it in the early weeks of being on site. 
  • Provide local examples and engage students with scenarios to work through to deepen their engagement.​
• Develop community agreements. In addition to other guidelines and policies that govern safety in your program, another strategy is to develop agreements and guidelines that set expectations for discussions and behavior during the program.
  • Determine whether you need one set of agreements to cover both formal group activities and expectations for students during informal formal activities or two different sets of guidance.
  • Consider developing these guidelines with students and participating partners to build rapport, encourage shared ownership and accountability.  

Responding: Acknowledge, Assess, Clarify

Don't ignore the moment. Students will look to you for how to navigate when acrimony erupts. Model what you want to see in students.

If you are present when the moment happens (e.g., during a lecture, in transit, during an excursion or fieldwork)

• Pause. Breathe. Assess.
  • Determine the type of H.O.T. moment you are witnessing or engaged in.
  • Decide whether the best course of action is to address it immediately or let it sit.  
    • Acknowledge that something has happened and determine whether to end the activity and when you will come back to it (after a break, after lunch, next cohort meeting, etc.).
    • This tactic is also useful if you are caught unprepared, are yourself the cause, or are triggered by what has happened.
• Acknowledge. Invite Clarification.
  • Assume positive intent among the individual(s) involved (students, host nationals, organizational partners).
  • If you have developed community agreements, this is an opportunity to remind students of the principles and to put them into practice work through the situation.
  • Illustrative Prompts:
    • Could you please say more about that?
    • Can you elaborate on your point?
    • It sounds like you have a strong opinion about this. Would you tell me why?
    • What is it about this ______ that concerns you the most?
    • I hear you saying X; is that what you meant?

Responding: Identify, Explore Impact, Reframe

Identify & explore the potential impact on others. Sometimes we don’t understand that what we are saying or doing is problematic. In other cases, the statement or act may take the form of a microaggression grounded in one or more stereotypes. Whatever the source, it is necessary to help members of the cohort and individual identify what is problematic. 

Illustrative Prompts:

• What do you think people think when they hear that type of comment?
• What message do you think such a comment sends? What impact do you think that comment could have on … ? How do you think this message is understood by ... as contrasted with back home? (e.g., onsite students, host family, onsite faculty/supervisors, etc.)
• Some might find X problematic because of….
• When you said X, I (or others may have) felt like Y. 
• In the future, please [offer an an invitation for the group to figure out a shared language together].
• Shall we talk about why the initial phrasing or act felt problematic?
• I could easily imagine this might feel like an insult to people who…
• This seems like a good time to revisit and remind ourselves about…

Navigating microaggressions abroad can be especially challenging, even for experienced facilitators skilled in inclusive practice. While systems of inequity and marginalization have been observed globally, the development of stereotypes and biases related to difference are historically, culturally and locally situated. H.O.T. moments can involve both cultural misunderstanding and microaggressions at the same time. For example, when the incident involves individuals that have experienced discrimination/marginalization in their home country/community but are now confronted with behaviors that mirror their past experiences but which, in context, may not have the same meaning.

​During the heat of the moment, it may not be possible to address both. You may need to revisit facets of the issues iteratively throughout the remainder of the program. Acknowledge this. Pause and let the group/individuals affected know when you will come back to it. Follow up separately with the effected individuals. 

If a student reports a H.O.T. moment that erupts during unsupervised time or involves interactions with onsite staff, homestays, or at internship placements, offer to meet with the effected student and schedule time with onsite staff to appraise the situation. If you have worked to develop a plan with onsite staff to anticipate H.O.T. moments, meet with them to address the specifics of the situation and respond.

• How will your response address concern for the psychological safety of those involved? What are the trade offs?
  
• What elements of your/their response will be consistent regardless of the person's identity, role, position, or affinity?
• What would need to vary depending on if it was with a host family, an internship supervisor, a host national faculty member etc. that was involved?
• What sources of power and cultural dynamics might be at play in this situation that will impact your response and that of onsite partners?

Change the Energy

• Throughout the discussion, invite students to pause, take breaks, and take stock. Offer prompts that help students name their emotions and engage with their senses (movement, drawing, writing, listening to music). Sometimes simply naming and then breaking the tension by doing something different with our bodies or minds can be very helpful for moving forward productively with a difficult conversation. 
• After discussing intense issues, guide students to reflect individually and/or collectively on the issues raised and the perspectives they heard on these issues. Consider using a questionnaire where students can share what they appreciated about the conversation, what they learned from it, and what remains unresolved.  

Responding: Pause, Seek Common Ground, Reflect

Connect to Learning Goals

• Find a way to connect the hot moment to program topics or learning goals. What does the big emotion present among the group suggest about the importance of the topic under study in the program? In what ways, can course materials help inform, anchor, or delimit the discussion that follows a hot moment?  Are there learning objectives in your program related to critical thinking, cultural humility, perspective taking, or precise framing of an argument that can be reinforced through the ways you invite students to engage?

• Seek Common Ground - Provide a basis for common understanding by establishing facts and questions about the topics raised in the tense moment. You can share key information yourself or invite students to do so.
  • If in a classroom setting, you might write categories on the board (“what we know,” “what is disputed,” “what we want to know more about”) and elicit items for each category. ​
• Check in after the organized activity and discussion with the students most directly involved in the moment, to show your commitment to their well-being, to help them learn from the experience, and to learn from them more about their experience of incident and their experiences in the program. 
  
• Connect with your own support network. This individual or group may the EA staff on campus, colleagues, or others. These relationships are especially important, if you felt targeted or personally affronted by whatever emerged during the HOT moment. It can be very helpful to process your responses with trusted colleagues or friends in order to return to the cohort with confidence and optimism.

Practice: Go Deeper

Responding: Acknowledge, Assess, Clarify​

• ​Sensoy, O. & DiAngelo, R. (2015). Respect Differences? Challenging the Common Guidelines for Social Justice Education. Democracy & Education, 22(2).​
• National Equity Project. Developing Community Agreements.​
• FIRE (2022). Studying Abroad, Speaking Out: How U.S. Universities Approach Expression in Study Abroad Programs. ​​
• The LARA Method for Managing Tense Talks.

Responding: Identify, Explore Impact, Reframe

• Souza, T. (2018). Responding to microagressions in the classroom.​
• Office of Faculty Development, Diversity and Engagement (2021). Faculty Anti-bias Training Resources: Recognizing & addressing microaggressions. Stanford University.
• Musha Doerr, N. & Kumagai, Y. (2023). Flickers of difference: Living & learning with others through inclusive classroom projects. In A House Where all Belong: Redesigning Education Abroad for Inclusive Excellence. The Forum on Education Abroad.