The social nature of New Education: an affiliation network analysis of the movement's evolution, 1875-1935

Abstract

The New Education movement was a remarkable coalition of national reform movements that emerged at the turn of the twentieth century. As a heterogeneous movement that was united only in its opposition to the schooling system at the time, its structure and boundaries in the UK have remained a matter of academic debate. This article implements the previously proposed idea of treating New Education as a social movement and analysing the networks between reformers. A social network analysis of the central 58 reformers suggests that the movement was initially divided into two ideologically separate subgroups, but that from ca. 1905 onwards the reformers were strongly interconnected despite their different interests. Thus, by focusing on the social structure of the movement's core rather than its educational thought, the article challenges the assumption that the New Education movement was fragmented and characterised by tensions. It also furthers the discussion on the feasibility of social network analysis for studying educational reforms.