Description: 'New Education' was a concept and a reality that occurred in some parts of the 'Western' world during the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries. It is not easy to define, and it is possible to identify other 'new educations', both across the centuries and in different areas of the globe. Although the term 'New Education' as exemplified in publications and in the title of this symposium is widely used and understood, it is often subsumed within broader concepts such as 'Progressive Education'. Indeed, one of the leading authorities on the subject, the eminent Australian scholar, R.J.W. Selleck, moved from the former to the latter in the titles of his magisterial volumes published in 1968 and 1972 (Selleck, 1968, 1972). This paper encompasses both the inter-war period and the Second World War itself. It focuses upon the substantial contributions of the Institute of Education's two principal Directors of this period - Percy Nunn and Fred Clarke - but also allows for some reference to the work of their predecessor, John Adams. Indeed Adams began his, Modern Developments in Educational Practice, first published in 1922, the year of his retirement, with the acknowledgement that 'now we have the New Education, with its variant the New Teaching, not to speak of New Children'. (Adams, 1922, 1) Reference is also made to the work of other leading members of Institute staff, including Cyril Burt and Susan Isaacs. Their contributions are examined within a variety of general social and political contexts and also with reference to specific institutional frameworks. The Institute of Education, with its developing (and at times potentially contradictory) roles, for example as an institution for the training of prospective and practising teachers and a metropolitan, national and imperial centre for educational studies, provides the most immediate of these. Another is the New Education Fellowship, established at Calais in 1921, and its journal, The New Era. Conclusions drawn demonstrate the complexities of the relationship between the transformation of knowledge, New Education and the Institute of Education in this period. These were both individual and institutional and changed over time. For example, both Nunn and Clarke were advocates of freedom in education, and in society more broadly, but their concepts of freedom were construed in significantly different ways and contexts. Similarly, an institution that encouraged prospective teachers to adopt child-centred approaches to teaching and study in the elementary schools of London did not necessarily consider these methods appropriate for those who were proceeding to posts in the mission schools of the Empire.