Social Imaginaries and the New Education Fellowship

Synonyms

New Education Fellowship (NEF); Progressive Education Association (PEA)

Introduction

The New Education Fellowship (NEF, the “Fellowship”) was the largest, most influential, and enduring of the organizations that emerged from the new education movement. The NEF was established in Europe in 1921 primarily to promote new education ideals following the founding of the Progressive Education Association (PEA) in the USA in 1919. These two progressive organizations were part of a broader wave of “crusades” that comprised the initial global development of “the new education” in the late nineteenth century and early decades of the twentieth century. Both the NEF and the PEA built on the efforts of the new or pioneering schools, the progressive ideas of eminent educational thinkers, and the development of a range of new education teaching methods that enabled pioneering teachers to put new education ideals into practice.

The NEF had a broad agenda that not only included the promotion of...