LAUSR

ABSTRACT This paper presents a comparative analysis of two high schools, one in the Arab Education system in Israel and the other in the English Education system in Europe. The comparative analysis focuses on two principals’ perspectives of how they led their schools, in partnership with the authors from Higher Education Institutions, by implementing a distinctive mark of distributed leadership by an whole school inquiry led inter-cultural change. The change facilitated knowledge exchange, mobilisation, and dissemination activities that empowered staff and young people to become societal innovators for equity and renewal which raised student outcomes between – 17% and 27% The research reveals that shared aims, themes and methods through a distinctive mark of distributed leadership by whole school inquiry develops new inter-cultural understandings and builds respect, trust, and local research priorities and practices in communities of diverse race, ethnicity, cultural, religious, and citizen or refugee status. Members of diverse communities were able to hold each other to account, and became more autonomous in their plans for the future in a context of gaps in status in both contexts.