ABSTRACT
The recognition and reconciliation of opposites' lies at the heart of the personal and global wicked problems and is perhaps the neglected developmental task of Western education. The educative rationale for a bi-relational approach to wicked problems is simply that these lines can be drawn effectively with a deeper understanding of what it is they divide. The onto-epistemological challenge is to identify and conceptualise life's wicked problems in a way that does not exacerbate them by forcing them into exclusively binary oppositional solutions or neglecting them altogether on the grounds that they have no solutions or (re)solvability at all. The bi-relational positions or dyadic relationships and dynamics offer some explanations for the complex challenges and wicked problems that arise in different domains of knowledge and life. Kamerling and Gustavson describe similarly high stakes for exclusively binary oppositional approaches to wicked problems that require relational and contextual (re)solutions: Opposites collide in a battle between universal polarities all peoples and culture reside.
