This dissertation examined the structure and development of the New Education Movement in the United Kingdom between 1875 and 1935. New Education was a reform movement that aimed to address the changing educational needs of societies and accommodate new moral doctrines and discoveries in the field of child psychology. Past literature has shown that the movement was ideologically fragmented. Thus, this dissertation implemented the previously proposed idea of treating New Education as a social movement rather than as a paradigm and analysing the networks between reformers.

To identify the key reformers, a reputational sampling method was applied. The study adopted a mixed methods approach, where information about key reformers’ connections to various organisations was gathered from biographies and histories and treated as co-affiliation data (n1 = 58, n2 = 49). These quantitative data were complemented by documentary evidence that was used to validate and illustrate the observations made using two-mode network analysis.

Article I presents a case study of the network of Robert Baden-Powell, the founder of the worldwide Scout Movement. The study indicated a change in 1911, when Baden-Powell’s network connections were increasingly dominated by a group of new educationalists to the detriment of the social reformers. This shift demonstrates how Baden-Powell became involved in the wider New Education Movement to make his scheme more relevant to the contemporary political agenda.

Article II revealed the overall structure of the New Education Movement and its evolution. Two-mode network analysis showed that until 1905, the movement was in a pre-institutional phase and was divided into two subgroups. From 1905 onwards, the movement became institutionalised and more interconnected. This development followed the appointment of the first professors of education in the UK and the founding of new organisations that aimed to impact society more directly than those established during the previous phase.

Article III examined the various roles of reformers during the institutional phase of New Education. Drawing from the literature on social movements, the analysis provided empirical support for the previously proposed idea that there were two kinds of prominence within the movement: that of conveners, who formed close-knit groups with like-minded people, and that of mediators, who built bridges between such groups. How these roles promoted the progress of the movement is discussed based on both quantitative and qualitative data.

The results collectively demonstrated that New Education was built on grassroots action and social ties rather than shared ideologies or theories. Analysis of the composition of the subgroups showed a temporal change within the movement. Until the first decade of the 20th century, there was a distinction between social reformers and another group of reformers who focused more strictly on educational questions. After that, this division became less important with regard to the case organisation, the Scout Movement and the New Education Movement as a whole. The movement not only became more influential but also more unified.

While filling a gap in New Education research, the dissertation illustrated a method of analysing social movements using co-affiliation data. Creating network data from less structured documentary sources instead of using pre-collected datasets enables contributions to a wider variety of topics. Thus, the study contributes to the scholarly discussion on how network analysis can provide a new tool for revealing the past.