Education for Wicked Problems and the Reconciliation of Opposites

A theory of bi-relational development

Raoul J. Adam

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2016
• eBook ISBN: 9781317333197
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Education General

The recognition and reconciliation of 'opposites' lies at the heart of our most personal and global problems and is arguably one of the most neglected developmental tasks of Western education. Such problems are 'wicked' in the sense that they involve real-life decisions that have to be made in rapidly changing contexts involving irreducible tensions and paradoxes. By exploring our human tendency to bifurcate the universe, Education for Wicked Problems & the Reconciliation of Opposites proposes a way to recognise and (re)solve some of our most wicked problems.

Applying an original theory of bi-relational development to wicked problems, Adam proposes that our everyday ways of knowing and being can be powerfully located and understood in terms of the creation, emergence, opposition, convergence, collapse and trans-position of dyadic constituents such as nature/culture, conservative/liberal and spirit/matter. He uses this approach to frame key debates in and across domains of knowledge and to offer new perspectives on three of the most profound and related problems of the twenty-first century: globalisation, sustainability and secularisation.

This book is a comprehensive study of dyads and dyadic relationships and provides a multidisciplinary and original approach to human development in the face of wicked problems. It will be of great interest to students and academics in education and psychosocial development as well as professionals across a range of fields looking for new ways to recognise and (re)solve the wicked problems that characterise their professions.

I Theory

1 Wicked problems and the reconciliation of opposites

DOI: 10.4324/9781315659152-1

The recognition and reconciliation of ‘opposites’ lies at the heart of our most personal and global wicked problems and is perhaps the most neglected developmental task of Western education. Somewhere on this planet, at this very moment, there is an expectant couple contemplating how best to bring a child into the world (traditional/alternative), to raise it (permissive/authoritarian) and to educate it (learner-centred/teacher-centred). There is a physician considering how to treat a young woman with debilitating anxiety (mind/body). There is a businessman waiting for a train near a beggar with an outstretched hand wondering whether charity is part of the solution or part of the problem of poverty (dependence/independence). There is a young man in a prison cell reflecting on the cause of his crime (nature/nurture) and a judge deciding his sentence (punishment/rehabilitation). There is a conservative politician campaigning for war and a liberal politician campaigning for peace (war/peace, conservative/liberal). There is a group of loggers preparing to clear a forest and a group of activists who have chained themselves to its trees (develop/conserve). There is a cleric who is lamenting a faithless world and a scientist who is celebrating it (faith/reason; spirit/matter). Almost by definition, life’s wickedest problems and solutions involve the expression and reconciliation of ‘opposites’.

Many readers will be familiar with such pairings (i.e. dyads) and polarities. Rightly so, some readers will question the implicit stereotypes. Could not the scientist lament a godless world and the cleric appeal to reason? Could not the physician heal the body through the mind? Could not the conservative politician advocate for peace and the liberal politician advocate for a just war? Could not a young man’s nature be his ancestors’ nurture and his punishment his rehabilitation? Why associate the masculine with criminality and the feminine with anxiety? My premise is that the ways we know and live in relation to such dyads is profoundly important to the way we recognise and (re)solve wicked problems. Our ability to reconcile opposites is a developmental task that demands serious attention, especially from educators. Of course, the task is nothing new. However, the recognition and reconciliation of apparent opposites in the modern world (e.g. unity/diversity; faith/reason; develop/conserve) is more globally consequential and communicable than ever before. Accordingly, this book introduces a bi-relational (i.e. relations between two) approach to wicked problems that I have, with pun on wings intended, called BirD (i.e. Bi-relational Development). BirD is an attempt to map out some of our archetypal ways of knowing and being in relation to the dyads that identify our most pressing concerns. It is a representation of human development that spans from our first divisions of knowledge, through its binary oppositions, and on to our final attempts to put it back together. Such developments have much to do with the ways we recognise and (re)solve wicked problems.

A ‘wicked problem’ (Rittel and Webber, 1973) has no definitive formulation, no immediate or ultimate test of solution, no clear contextual delineation and is open only to (re)solving rather than final objective solutions. The concept is sometimes used interchangeably with ‘ill-structured problems’ (King and Kitchener, 2002; Mitroff et al., 2004), ‘messes’ (Ackoff, 1993), and ‘social messes’ (Horn, 2004). King and Kitchener (2002) describe ‘ill-structured problems’ as those about which ‘reasonable people reasonably disagree’ (p. 37). The type of wicked problems I hope to identify in this book could be known more specifically as entangled problems, which arise at the interface of interdependent polarities. They are ‘wicked’ in the sense that this interface is contextually dynamic and problems must be (re)solved in context rather than solved once and for all. Such problems are perplexing; they involve paradox, dialectic and necessary tensions. There are hints and traces of the reconciliation of opposites in the literature on wicked problems. For example, in Tackling Wicked Problems through the Transdisciplinary ImaginationBrown et al. (2010) write: ‘In traditional research, a paradox is treated as a pair of opposites. In an open inquiry, the pairs of opposites are treated as complementary and provide a useful indicator of the heart of an issue’ (p. 63). However, I am unaware of any comprehensive treatments that explore the development of such bi-relational logics in the approach to wicked problems.

The bi-relational ways we know and live in relation to wicked problems are not just academic concerns. The sample dyads in Table 1.1 relate to everyday struggles in real-world contexts. Our attempt to coordinate them is what makes us collectively human and individually and culturally diverse.

The ways we recognise and navigate between dyadic poles can see us deeply divided over the ways to raise our children (attachment/independence) and to educate them (teacher-centred/learner-centred), the ways to improve our health (natural/synthetic), run our economies (capitalist/communist), manage the planet (conservation/development), engage with nature (nature/culture), understand our histories (mythos/logos), organise our cultures (local/global), make our ultimate meanings (matter/spirit) and conceptualise our existence (birth/death). Of course, the act of living means that ‘we have to draw the line somewhere’ amid the wicked problems we face. The educative rationale for a bi-relational approach to wicked problems is simply that these lines can be drawn more effectively with a deeper understanding of what it is they divide.

Table 1.1 Illustrative list of dyads

Subjective/Objective Relative/Absolute Empirical/Rational Change/Stability A posteriori/A priori Faith/Reason Mind/Body Collective/Individual Intuitive/Rational Everything/Nothing Perception/Reality Symbolic/Literal Mythos/Logos Spirit/Matter Synthetic/Analytic Autonomous/Dependent Immanent/Transcendent Isolated/Integrated Divergent/Convergent Expansive/Reductive Abstract/Concrete Self/Other Liberal/Conservative Birth/Death

Sacred/Profane Attraction/Repulsion Theory/Practice Complex/Simple Nature/Nurture (Culture) Progressive/Conventional Heteronymous/Homogenous Intrinsic/Extrinsic Descriptive/Prescriptive Freedom/Control Holistic/Reductive Future/Past Chaos/Order Justice/Mercy Quality/Quantity Passive/Active Theism/Atheism Hierarchical/Egalitarian Teach/Learn Deficit/Surplus Supply/Demand Certainty/Doubt Similar/Different Masculine/Feminine

Science/Art Produce/Consume Common/Rare Formal/Casual Explicit/Implicit Cognitive/Affective Create/Destroy Innovate/Replicate Rich/Poor Competitive/Collaborative Give/Take General/Particular Love/Hate Success/Failure Pleasure/Pain Defend/Attack Agree/Oppose Hope/Despair Positive/Negative Conflict/Peace Left/Right Natural/Synthetic Capitalist/Communist Local/Global

The preceding list is illustrative rather than exhaustive and contains structurally different types of dyads that I discuss in Chapter 3. The list is not static and fixed; rather, it is an illustrative representation of dyads from a range of contexts and domains of knowledge. The meanings of these dyads shift and change over time and in different contexts but I argue that there is currently and cross-contextually enough stability and familiarity to make them worthy topics for discussion. Accordingly, this book explores dyadic structures and relationships as they appear in the context of wicked problems. It offers an analytical framework (i.e. BirD) to map the dyads, dyadic relationships, developments and dynamics that give structure and content to our most wicked problems. And this, so that we may be more masters over, rather than mastered by, our ability to bifurcate the universe.

Dyads and dyadic relationships

In some ways, the possibly dense analysis that follows is but a complex elaboration of the simple insight that socio-cultural dyads require the same coordination and development of dexterity in the (re)solution of wicked problems as hands, eyes and feet in the resolution of physical problems. I argue that some aspect of our minds is as symmetrically bifurcated as our hands, eyes and feet. This is not necessarily an optimal adaptation. Indeed, we have had a little less evolutionary time to coordinate our bifurcated minds or to evolve out of them altogether than we have had to coordinate our hands, eyes and feet, which at least are more immediately apparent than their cognitive-epistemic equivalents. However, I am purposefully slower than others have been to dismiss the bifurcation of the mind as just child’s play. Rather, like hands, feet and eyes the bifurcated mind can enable dexterous navigation of wickedly complex mental terrains. The mental coordination of dyadic constituents or the ‘reconciliation of opposites’, like the physical coordination of hands, eyes and feet, is a definitive task of human development.

The ubiquity of such dyads (e.g. conservative/liberal) and dyadic relationships (e.g. binary oppositional, complementary and unitary) across almost all domains of knowledge (e.g. politics, philosophy and science) makes for a topic worthy of attention. As C. G. Jung (1991) surmised, ‘The idea of the pairs of opposites is as old as the world’ (p. 72). These dyads and dyadic relationships are not just abstract or metaphysical concerns and constructions; rather, they have concrete expressions in everyday lives. Dyads or polarities allow us to orientate ourselves – to move, to act, to choose, to know and to be – within the most mundane and profound domains of life. We can be taller or shorter, faster or slower, happier or sadder, for better or worse. Dyads allow us to locate our ways of knowing (i.e. epistemologies) and being (i.e. ontologies) in relation to the knowing and being of others. Dyads allow us to be and to belong in relation to the being and belonging of others. We can be apart or together, in love or in hate, included or excluded, conservative or liberal and structured or spontaneous. Dyads are enablers of difference and decision that make knowing powerful and being meaningful. We can give or take, create or destroy, analyse or synthesise and let go or hold on. Finally, we can relate dyadic constituents through opposition, complement, dialectic, negation, union and paradox. These dyadic relationships both create and reflect the worlds we live in, the meanings and values we make and the wicked problems and challenges we face. Dyadic relationships provide a structure for understanding the problems and challenges that give meaning to our individual and social ways of being and knowing – what I term onto-epistemological developments. Accordingly, my elaborative project is to sketch out some bi-relational locations and dynamics – much like a cartographer plots lines of longitude and latitude between poles – to help identify and navigate some of our most complex human terrains and wicked problems.

Of course, one cannot talk meaningfully about two (i.e. a dyad) without locating it among discussions of zero, one, three and infinity. Accordingly, the aim of this book is to explicate and engage an existential riddle at the core of human development:

What becomes one

Which then becomes two

Which then becomes something

That is often thought of

And may well be fought of

As Zero

Or One

Or Two

Or Three

Or even by some

As In-fin-ity?

(Note that I have used capitalisation to emphasise a more delevoped or encompassing way of knowing a concept, e.g. One rather than one.) Riddle-solving is, of course, a ridiculously serious business, and I think it is fair to say that nihilists, monists, dualists, triadists, multiplists and infinitarians have contested their solutions to this wicked problem as much with the sword as with the stylus since knowing and being began. Indeed, such contestations are as modern as they are ancient.

Twenty-two centuries ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half-Title Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Table of Contents
• List of illustrations
• Acknowledgements
• Credits
• PART 1 Theory
• PART 2 Illustrations
• PART 3 Applications
• Index