With the rise of popularism, and fake news, there is a lack of trust in governance systems which is impacting on citizens' apathy towards societal institutions and political states' people, and what appears to be a lack of trust in the application of the rules of the governance systems. The aim of this 'Large Symposium in two parts' is to make sense of the beliefs held in governance systems pertaining to trust. To address the aim we present     the perspectives of our ten research partnerships in education from Russia, Pakistan, India, Nigeria, Trinidad and Tobago, Arab Israel, England, Italy, Northern Ireland, Spain, and the United States. Each of our research partnerships report on their research partnerships with schools and colleges that focus on describing the extent to which trust exists in international education governance systems.  In part 1 we explore the extent to which education has navigated turbulence to overcome conflict and marginalisation and how this has informed knowledge to action strategies; a boundary crossing research project to empower Senior Credentialed Educational Leaders in partnership with Higher Education Institutions  to apply A Blueprint for Character Development for Evolution (ABCDE) in stages. The Dewey inspired ABCDE facilitates scaleable self assessment to promote critical, and reflective development of transparent, and shared primary moral and secondary intellectual virtues for character development. The moral inquiry is intercultural because it focuses on traditions of different religious, humanitarian and philosophical texts to replace fear of the other with understanding, tolerance and trust to propel entrepreneurial economies, community cohesion, and advocacy for transparent political manifestos for equity.

In part 2 we explore 5 pilot studies of ABCDE with two aims a) how educational leaders describe the extent to which trust and moral virtue is developed in their educational governance systems, and b) the extent to which they believe moral virtues and trust can be developed in education governance systems through knowledge to action strategies that they co-create with Higher Education Institutions, and with their school and college professional learning communities.

The symposium allows the work to become a global intercultural dialogue exploring the role of moral virtue in educational professionals' professional learning in International Education Governance Systems.

To address the aim we ask a) how can education reconcile rival, even hostile understandings within or across societies by adopting a distinctive mark of distributed leadership? b) to what extent is the distinctive mark of distributed leadership by whole school intercultural moral inquiry into ethical rules? c) what conditions are required for  the moral inquiry into the ethical rules to generate trust in governance systems? d) how can generating trust in governance systems lead to evolving gender relationships in a post-racial society for equity, renewal and peace?

Our pilot reveals without ABCDE leaders are witnessing societal fear, conflict, desire for material wealth, a sense of helplessness, Violence, Uncertainty, Chaos and Ambiguity.

The symposium's impact is to offer thought provoking evidence of the emergence of and piloting of knowledge to action strategies to develop diverse communities' moral and ethical governance of their own lives through a distinctive mark of distributed leadership to make good choices and live good lives with happy endings. 

Adler, M. (1941) A Dialectic of Morals: Towards the Foundations of Political Philosophy. Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame. Barnett, R. (2000) Higher Education a Critical Business. Buckingham: SRH. Collins- Ayanlaja, C., and Taysum, A. (2016) A Bourdieusian Analysis of Institutionalised Racism, World Educational Research Association, April, Washington. Dewey, J. (1916). Democracy and Education. USA: Complete and unabridged classic reprint. Glazer, N. (1987) Affirmative Discrimination Ethnic Inequality and Public Policy. Harvard: Harvard University Press. Möllering, G. (2001). 'The Nature of Trust. From Georg Simmel to a Theory of Expectations, Interpretation and Suspense'. Sociology 35, (2) pp. 403-420. Wagner. T. (2010). The global Achievement Gap. New York: Basic Books. Collins-Ayanlaja, C, and Taysum. A. (2015) Parents’ of Black Children’s authentic participation in a school system. Edulead Conference, NorthWest University Potchefstroom, South Africa, April. Taysum, A. (2019) A Deweyen framework moral training for democracy in education. In C. Lowery & P. Jenkin (Eds.), A Dewey Handbook Of Dewey’s Education Theory and Practice. Rotterdam: Sense Publishing. Taysum, A. (2017) ‘Systems Theory and education: A philosophical enquiry into Education Systems Theory’ In P. Higgs, and Y. Waghid (eds) A Reader for Philosophy of Education. 1, 1. South Africa: Juta. Taysum, A. And Arar, K. (2018) Turbulence, Empowerment and Marginalised Groups in International Education Governance Systems. Scarborough Emerald.