Colin Mills
Biographic Data
| ID | 3659331 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Colin Mills |
| GIVEN NAMES | Colin |
| FAMILY NAME | Mills |
| SIGNATURE | MILLS C |
| AFFILIATIONS | London School of Economics and Political Science |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-4149-0961 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 31 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 285 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 31 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1940 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2022 |
| H-INDEX | 10 |
“Those in the know”: Primary school literacy as a corporate field of knowledge
Using our re-readings of Margaret Meek Spencer’s work and career, we connect her scholarship to our mapping of contemporary changes in knowledge and our investigations of so-called “knowers”: those mobilising knowledge to underpin and control professionals’ enactment of policy in primary school literacy. Working from the theoretical resources of Basil Bernstein, we develop an analysis of these knowers’ production of knowledge, navigating from his…
Margaret Meek Spencer: Taking her work on
Margaret Meek Spencer: Taking her work on
“I begin not with levels of correctness, decoding or skills, but with dialogue and desire”Our retrospective on Margaret Meek (English in Education 54:3) reflected on her writing and lecturing from
Remembering Margaret Meek Spencer, teacher, critic, researcher and writer: 14 January 1925 – 4 May 2020
“Teachers are experts in that they are where the evidence of learning is”(Achieving Literacy, 1983: p.7)Margaret Meek Spencer’s death at the age of 95 may give readers pause for thought. Most of us
On Group Comparisons With Logistic Regression Models
It is widely believed that regression models for binary responses are problematic if we want to compare estimated coefficients from models for different groups or with different explanatory variables. This concern has two forms. The first arises if the binary model is treated as an estimate of a model for an unobserved continuous response and the second when models are compared between groups that have different distributions of other causes of t…
Social Class Origin and Assortative Mating in Britain, 1949-2010
This article examines trends in assortative mating in Britain over the last 60 years. Assortative mating is the tendency for like to form a conjugal partnership with like. Our focus is on the association between the social class origins of the partners. The propensity towards assortative mating is taken as an index of the openness of society which we regard as a macro level aspect of social inequality. There is some evidence that the propensity f…
Consultants, consultancy and consultocracy in education policymaking in England
The role and contribution of consultants and consultancy in public services has grown rapidly and the power of consultants suggests the emergence of a ‘consultocracy’. We draw on research evidence from the social sciences and critical education policy (CEP) studies to present an examination of the state of the field. We deploy a framework that examines functional, critical and socially critical research and theorising, and we identify the emergin…
Consultants, brokers, experts’: Knowledge actors and knowledge exchange and flows in educational administration
Contributors to this special issue have responded in varied and in imaginative ways to the challenges set in the ‘call for papers’. The invitation sets out a context of change within educational ad
The Great British Class Survey: Requiescat in Pace
Professor Savage and his colleagues have shifted intellectual ground and changed the intellectual focus of the Great British Class Survey (GBCS) from the provision of 'a comprehensive map of class in Britain' to an examination of what they call the British 'elite'. I argue that this 'elite' is no such thing and that whatever it is, it is not well defined by the procedures that are used to identify it. At the heart of all the papers the GBCS team …
The Great British Class Fiasco: A Comment on Savage et al
Savage et al. (2013) claim they have produced a new model of the British class structure. They stress the innovative use of an internet survey, the BBC's Great British Class Survey (GBCS), but it plays no serious role in the generation of their class typology. What they do is a theory free (though Bourdieu inspired) data dredging exercise. What they derive is an arbitrary typology determined by a contingent fact - the size of their sample
Trends in Intergenerational Class Mobility in Modern Britain: Evidence From National Surveys, 1972—2005
We present analyses of intergenerational social class mobility based on data from representative samples of the British population from 1972 to 2005. We distinguish throughout between absolute and relative rates of mobility. As regards absolute rates, we find little or no change in total mobility rates over the period covered. In the case of men, there is also little change in rates of upward and downward mobility — in contrast with the middle de…
Market, Class, and Employment
Drawing on a range of employee and employer surveys, this study presents an examination of the conditions, attitudes, and experiences of British employees over the last twenty years. Based on the ‘Future of Work’ research programme this book aims to shape understanding of employment in Britain for the foreseeable future.
Education, Employers and Class Mobility
‘High‐performance’ Management Practices, Working Hours and Work–Life Balance
The effects of selected high‐performance practices and working hours on work–life balance are analysed with data from national surveys of British employees in 1992 and 2000. Alongside long hours, which are a constant source of negative job‐to‐home spillover, certain ‘high‐performance’ practices have become more strongly related to negative spillover during this period. Surprisingly, dual‐earner couples are not especially liable to spillover — if …
In search of the wage-labour/service contract: New evidence on the validity of the Goldthorpe class schema
In this paper we examine new empirical evidence on the coherence and magnitude of the main classes in the Goldthorpe class schema. Particular attention is paid to issues that have recently been a source of academic dispute: the coherence and size of the service class and the distinction between the service class and intermediate classes. Using recently available British data collected by the Office for National Statistics we examine: (i) the exte…
Are There Classes in Post-communist Societies? A New Approach to Identifying Class Structure
If class theory has explanatory and descriptive power it should be possible to provide evidence that social classes exist as phenomena generic to modern industrial societies. This paper addresses this issue by examining the structure of class situations, as defined by job attributes, in two central European, post-communist societies - Hungary and Poland - and then comparing them with a benchmark Western society, Britain. Classes are identified th…
A Latent Class Analysis of the Criterion-Related and Construct Validity of the Goldthorpe Class Schema
This paper assesses whether a class structure can be discerned using job characteristics as indicators of class positions derived from employment relations. A structure underlying the distribution of these characteristics is identified using latent class analysis. The relation between this structure and the J. Goldthorpe class schema is then modelled, allowing an assessment of the latter's criterion-related validity. Both the latent class represe…
British Social Attitudes the 11th Report
Analyzing Tabular Data: Loglinear and Logistic Models for Social Researchers
Real and imaginary worlds classification and measurement cross-tabulations association and interaction loglinear analysis choosing and fitting models modelling mobility and change high dimension tables effects and odds ratios logistic regression causal analysis models with ordinal variables event history models
Authentic Activity and Learning
This article describes the tension that exists between the views of learning as a means of knowledge transfer and the alternative idea that it is socially situated and not separable from the activities in which it is developed. It concludes that the 'authentic practices' of particular academic domains should be employed in schools to encourage learning rather the culture of schooling itself
Authentic activity and learning
This article describes the tension that exists between the views of learning as a means of knowledge transfer and the alternative idea that it is socially situated and not separable from the activities in which it is developed. It concludes that the ‘authentic practices’ of particular academic domains should be employed in schools to encourage learning rather the culture of schooling itself
Rational Choice Marxism and Social Class Boundaries
Rational Choice Marxism (RCM) is an increasingly influential strand of thought in an increasingly post-Marxist world. Part of its interest is the attempt of some thinkers to move beyond the exegetical debates that have often passed for Marxist social science. This article attempts an assessment of how fruitful this shift of focus has been in one area where there is significant overlap with the interests of more mainstream social scientists, the c…
Women's Social Standing. The Empirical Problem of Female Social Class
The Registrar General's social class scheme - the Stevenson version The Registrar General's social class scheme - the last half-century women in the social class scheme do women marry socially? classification using HORG and the alternative measuring female life chances - the variables and the data the distribution of female life chances a tall story the role of height implications
Who 'Dominates' Whom? Social Class, Conjugal Households and Political Identification
The existence of cross-class families, where the wife's occupation is taken to be superior to that of the husband, has been seen as a challenge to conventional ways of allocating class positions to partners in the conjugal household. Data from the Social Change and Economic Life Initiative survey conducted in 1986 are used to estimate the numerical importance of such families. Three approaches to the class allocation of men and women in conjugal …
Social Class and Educational Attainment in Historical Perspective: A Swedish-English Comparison Part I
Nationally representative data sets are used to compare the pattern of social class inequality in educational attainment in England and Sweden during the 20s century. Logit models are estimated to test hypotheses about change in class inequalities at crucial branching points in the educational system. The analysis show that equalizations are apparent in both nations at the first branching point, where traditionally inequalities were most severe. …
Education, Employers and Class Mobility
A Latent Class Analysis of the Criterion-Related and Construct Validity of the Goldthorpe Class Schema
This paper assesses whether a class structure can be discerned using job characteristics as indicators of class positions derived from employment relations. A structure underlying the distribution of these characteristics is identified using latent class analysis. The relation between this structure and the J. Goldthorpe class schema is then modelled, allowing an assessment of the latter's criterion-related validity. Both the latent class represe…
In search of the wage-labour/service contract: New evidence on the validity of the Goldthorpe class schema
In this paper we examine new empirical evidence on the coherence and magnitude of the main classes in the Goldthorpe class schema. Particular attention is paid to issues that have recently been a source of academic dispute: the coherence and size of the service class and the distinction between the service class and intermediate classes. Using recently available British data collected by the Office for National Statistics we examine: (i) the exte…
The Great British Class Fiasco: A Comment on Savage et al
Savage et al. (2013) claim they have produced a new model of the British class structure. They stress the innovative use of an internet survey, the BBC's Great British Class Survey (GBCS), but it plays no serious role in the generation of their class typology. What they do is a theory free (though Bourdieu inspired) data dredging exercise. What they derive is an arbitrary typology determined by a contingent fact - the size of their sample
Consultants, consultancy and consultocracy in education policymaking in England
The role and contribution of consultants and consultancy in public services has grown rapidly and the power of consultants suggests the emergence of a ‘consultocracy’. We draw on research evidence from the social sciences and critical education policy (CEP) studies to present an examination of the state of the field. We deploy a framework that examines functional, critical and socially critical research and theorising, and we identify the emergin…
Social Class and Educational Attainment in Historical Perspective: A Swedish-English Comparison Part I
Nationally representative data sets are used to compare the pattern of social class inequality in educational attainment in England and Sweden during the 20s century. Logit models are estimated to test hypotheses about change in class inequalities at crucial branching points in the educational system. The analysis show that equalizations are apparent in both nations at the first branching point, where traditionally inequalities were most severe. …
On Group Comparisons With Logistic Regression Models
It is widely believed that regression models for binary responses are problematic if we want to compare estimated coefficients from models for different groups or with different explanatory variables. This concern has two forms. The first arises if the binary model is treated as an estimate of a model for an unobserved continuous response and the second when models are compared between groups that have different distributions of other causes of t…
Social Mobility in the 1970s and 1980s: A Study of Men and Women in England and Sweden
Theories about change in social mobility regimes have been difficult to test because of a lack of genuinely comparable data for multiple time-points. This problem is overcome for two European nations, Sweden and England, by making use of eleven different data-sets with closely matched social class-codings, covering the period between the late 1960s and the late 1980s. Data on both men and women are used to investigate whether these two societies …
Social Class Origin and Assortative Mating in Britain, 1949-2010
This article examines trends in assortative mating in Britain over the last 60 years. Assortative mating is the tendency for like to form a conjugal partnership with like. Our focus is on the association between the social class origins of the partners. The propensity towards assortative mating is taken as an index of the openness of society which we regard as a macro level aspect of social inequality. There is some evidence that the propensity f…
Life and Work History Analyses: Qualitative and Quantitative Developments
Life history analyses in perspective - qualitative and quantitative developments, Shirley Dex histories of sickness - making use of multiple accounts of same process, Paul Bellaby a land of boundless opportunity - mobility and stability in 19th century England, Andrew Miles and David Vincent from methodological monopoly to pluralism in sociology of social mobility, Daniel Bertaux handling work history data in standard statistical packages, Cather…
Are There Classes in Post-communist Societies? A New Approach to Identifying Class Structure
If class theory has explanatory and descriptive power it should be possible to provide evidence that social classes exist as phenomena generic to modern industrial societies. This paper addresses this issue by examining the structure of class situations, as defined by job attributes, in two central European, post-communist societies - Hungary and Poland - and then comparing them with a benchmark Western society, Britain. Classes are identified th…
Social Class and Educational Attainment in Historical Perspective: A Swedish-English Comparison Part II
Who 'Dominates' Whom? Social Class, Conjugal Households and Political Identification
The existence of cross-class families, where the wife's occupation is taken to be superior to that of the husband, has been seen as a challenge to conventional ways of allocating class positions to partners in the conjugal household. Data from the Social Change and Economic Life Initiative survey conducted in 1986 are used to estimate the numerical importance of such families. Three approaches to the class allocation of men and women in conjugal …
Ideas Are Weapons
The Great British Class Survey: Requiescat in Pace
Professor Savage and his colleagues have shifted intellectual ground and changed the intellectual focus of the Great British Class Survey (GBCS) from the provision of 'a comprehensive map of class in Britain' to an examination of what they call the British 'elite'. I argue that this 'elite' is no such thing and that whatever it is, it is not well defined by the procedures that are used to identify it. At the heart of all the papers the GBCS team …
Analyzing Tabular Data: Loglinear and Logistic Models for Social Researchers
Real and imaginary worlds classification and measurement cross-tabulations association and interaction loglinear analysis choosing and fitting models modelling mobility and change high dimension tables effects and odds ratios logistic regression causal analysis models with ordinal variables event history models
Rational Choice Marxism and Social Class Boundaries
Rational Choice Marxism (RCM) is an increasingly influential strand of thought in an increasingly post-Marxist world. Part of its interest is the attempt of some thinkers to move beyond the exegetical debates that have often passed for Marxist social science. This article attempts an assessment of how fruitful this shift of focus has been in one area where there is significant overlap with the interests of more mainstream social scientists, the c…
Consultants, brokers, experts’: Knowledge actors and knowledge exchange and flows in educational administration
Contributors to this special issue have responded in varied and in imaginative ways to the challenges set in the ‘call for papers’. The invitation sets out a context of change within educational ad
British Social Attitudes the 11th Report
The Theory of Social and Economic Organization
Ideas Are Weapons
The Theory of Social and Economic Organization
The Organizational Weapon: A Study of Bolshevik Strategy and Tactics.Philip Selznick
Life and Work History Analyses: Qualitative and Quantitative Developments
Life history analyses in perspective - qualitative and quantitative developments, Shirley Dex histories of sickness - making use of multiple accounts of same process, Paul Bellaby a land of boundless opportunity - mobility and stability in 19th century England, Andrew Miles and David Vincent from methodological monopoly to pluralism in sociology of social mobility, Daniel Bertaux handling work history data in standard statistical packages, Cather…
Social Class and Educational Attainment in Historical Perspective: A Swedish-English Comparison Part I
Nationally representative data sets are used to compare the pattern of social class inequality in educational attainment in England and Sweden during the 20s century. Logit models are estimated to test hypotheses about change in class inequalities at crucial branching points in the educational system. The analysis show that equalizations are apparent in both nations at the first branching point, where traditionally inequalities were most severe. …
Social Class and Educational Attainment in Historical Perspective: A Swedish-English Comparison Part II
Social Mobility in the 1970s and 1980s: A Study of Men and Women in England and Sweden
Theories about change in social mobility regimes have been difficult to test because of a lack of genuinely comparable data for multiple time-points. This problem is overcome for two European nations, Sweden and England, by making use of eleven different data-sets with closely matched social class-codings, covering the period between the late 1960s and the late 1980s. Data on both men and women are used to investigate whether these two societies …
Authentic Activity and Learning
This article describes the tension that exists between the views of learning as a means of knowledge transfer and the alternative idea that it is socially situated and not separable from the activities in which it is developed. It concludes that the 'authentic practices' of particular academic domains should be employed in schools to encourage learning rather the culture of schooling itself
Authentic activity and learning
This article describes the tension that exists between the views of learning as a means of knowledge transfer and the alternative idea that it is socially situated and not separable from the activities in which it is developed. It concludes that the ‘authentic practices’ of particular academic domains should be employed in schools to encourage learning rather the culture of schooling itself
Rational Choice Marxism and Social Class Boundaries
Rational Choice Marxism (RCM) is an increasingly influential strand of thought in an increasingly post-Marxist world. Part of its interest is the attempt of some thinkers to move beyond the exegetical debates that have often passed for Marxist social science. This article attempts an assessment of how fruitful this shift of focus has been in one area where there is significant overlap with the interests of more mainstream social scientists, the c…
Women's Social Standing. The Empirical Problem of Female Social Class
The Registrar General's social class scheme - the Stevenson version The Registrar General's social class scheme - the last half-century women in the social class scheme do women marry socially? classification using HORG and the alternative measuring female life chances - the variables and the data the distribution of female life chances a tall story the role of height implications
Who 'Dominates' Whom? Social Class, Conjugal Households and Political Identification
The existence of cross-class families, where the wife's occupation is taken to be superior to that of the husband, has been seen as a challenge to conventional ways of allocating class positions to partners in the conjugal household. Data from the Social Change and Economic Life Initiative survey conducted in 1986 are used to estimate the numerical importance of such families. Three approaches to the class allocation of men and women in conjugal …
British Social Attitudes the 11th Report
Analyzing Tabular Data: Loglinear and Logistic Models for Social Researchers
Real and imaginary worlds classification and measurement cross-tabulations association and interaction loglinear analysis choosing and fitting models modelling mobility and change high dimension tables effects and odds ratios logistic regression causal analysis models with ordinal variables event history models
A Latent Class Analysis of the Criterion-Related and Construct Validity of the Goldthorpe Class Schema
This paper assesses whether a class structure can be discerned using job characteristics as indicators of class positions derived from employment relations. A structure underlying the distribution of these characteristics is identified using latent class analysis. The relation between this structure and the J. Goldthorpe class schema is then modelled, allowing an assessment of the latter's criterion-related validity. Both the latent class represe…
Are There Classes in Post-communist Societies? A New Approach to Identifying Class Structure
If class theory has explanatory and descriptive power it should be possible to provide evidence that social classes exist as phenomena generic to modern industrial societies. This paper addresses this issue by examining the structure of class situations, as defined by job attributes, in two central European, post-communist societies - Hungary and Poland - and then comparing them with a benchmark Western society, Britain. Classes are identified th…
In search of the wage-labour/service contract: New evidence on the validity of the Goldthorpe class schema
In this paper we examine new empirical evidence on the coherence and magnitude of the main classes in the Goldthorpe class schema. Particular attention is paid to issues that have recently been a source of academic dispute: the coherence and size of the service class and the distinction between the service class and intermediate classes. Using recently available British data collected by the Office for National Statistics we examine: (i) the exte…
‘High‐performance’ Management Practices, Working Hours and Work–Life Balance
The effects of selected high‐performance practices and working hours on work–life balance are analysed with data from national surveys of British employees in 1992 and 2000. Alongside long hours, which are a constant source of negative job‐to‐home spillover, certain ‘high‐performance’ practices have become more strongly related to negative spillover during this period. Surprisingly, dual‐earner couples are not especially liable to spillover — if …
Education, Employers and Class Mobility
Market, Class, and Employment
Drawing on a range of employee and employer surveys, this study presents an examination of the conditions, attitudes, and experiences of British employees over the last twenty years. Based on the ‘Future of Work’ research programme this book aims to shape understanding of employment in Britain for the foreseeable future.
Trends in Intergenerational Class Mobility in Modern Britain: Evidence From National Surveys, 1972—2005
We present analyses of intergenerational social class mobility based on data from representative samples of the British population from 1972 to 2005. We distinguish throughout between absolute and relative rates of mobility. As regards absolute rates, we find little or no change in total mobility rates over the period covered. In the case of men, there is also little change in rates of upward and downward mobility — in contrast with the middle de…
The Great British Class Fiasco: A Comment on Savage et al
Savage et al. (2013) claim they have produced a new model of the British class structure. They stress the innovative use of an internet survey, the BBC's Great British Class Survey (GBCS), but it plays no serious role in the generation of their class typology. What they do is a theory free (though Bourdieu inspired) data dredging exercise. What they derive is an arbitrary typology determined by a contingent fact - the size of their sample
Consultants, consultancy and consultocracy in education policymaking in England
The role and contribution of consultants and consultancy in public services has grown rapidly and the power of consultants suggests the emergence of a ‘consultocracy’. We draw on research evidence from the social sciences and critical education policy (CEP) studies to present an examination of the state of the field. We deploy a framework that examines functional, critical and socially critical research and theorising, and we identify the emergin…
Consultants, brokers, experts’: Knowledge actors and knowledge exchange and flows in educational administration
Contributors to this special issue have responded in varied and in imaginative ways to the challenges set in the ‘call for papers’. The invitation sets out a context of change within educational ad
The Great British Class Survey: Requiescat in Pace
Professor Savage and his colleagues have shifted intellectual ground and changed the intellectual focus of the Great British Class Survey (GBCS) from the provision of 'a comprehensive map of class in Britain' to an examination of what they call the British 'elite'. I argue that this 'elite' is no such thing and that whatever it is, it is not well defined by the procedures that are used to identify it. At the heart of all the papers the GBCS team …
Sociology (25 works) · Political science (15 works) · Psychology (15 works) · Computer Science (11 works) · Economics (10 works) · Epistemology (9 works) · Intergenerational and Educational Inequality Studies (9 works) · Social class (9 works) · Social and Cultural Dynamics (8 works) · Pedagogy (7 works)