Colin Mills (educationalist)

Colin Mills (born Chester, Cheshire 6 January 1951) is a British educationalist and writer specialising in children's literature, literacy and policy research. He was educated at Chester College, (Cert. Ed., 1973) University of Liverpool, (B.Ed Hons, 1974, winning the Morrell Memorial Prize) and the University of London Institute of Education, (MA Ed, 1977, with distinction). Mills has written extensively on children's literacy and literature, including Language and Literacy in the Primary School, (1988) with Margaret Meek, Connecting, Creating: new ideas in Teaching Writing (with Sue Ellis) 2005, and contributions to The Routledge Encyclopedia of Children's Literature (2003), and the International Companion Encyclopedia of Children's Literature' (2007). His later work focused on education policy and research, including the edited collection, with Professors Helen Gunter and David Hall, on Education Policy Research (Bloomsbury, 2014) and Consultants and Consultancy: the case of Education (with Helen Gunter). Springer Publishers, 2017. Forthcoming works include a book on the marketisation of literacy in English primary schooling and an intellectual biography of Margaret Meek Spencer, who was his supervisor, mentor and co-author in the 80s and 90s.

He taught in schools in Cheshire and London, and worked as an advisory teacher and a researcher (1972-1989). He has held positions at the Universities of Exeter, Central England, Worcester, (1989-2007); and, since September 2007, University of Manchester, where he was a Senior Teaching Fellow. After semi-retiring in 2014, he became an Honorary Teaching Fellow. He is also an Honorary Research Fellow at Newman University, Birmingham and a visiting scholar at Ontario Institute for Studies in Education (OISE, Toronto). His brother is the comedian and writer, Bob Mills. His late father was the actor John Channell Mills.