published_or_final_version / Chinese / Master / Master of Philosophy

published_or_final_version / Chinese Historical Studies / Master / Master of Arts

published_or_final_version / Politics and Public Administration / Master / Master of Public Administration

My thesis analyzes China’s most famous commercial film director, Feng Xiaogang, and his New Year Films against the background of infrastructure reform in the Chinese movie industry. The past three decades have witnessed dramatic changes in the Chinese film industry and phenomenal growth in commercial film production due to the movie industry reform that was launched by the Chinese government in order to commercialize the film industry. Feng Xiaogang is both a beneficiary and a contributor to the commercialization of the movie industry, and his unprecedented success in the movie industry also reflected the cultural changes within the film industry. This thesis first examines the transformation of the film industry due to the movie reform that allowed Feng Xiaogang to cross over from the television industry to the film industry, and the emergence of independent film companies also provided Feng with the opportunity to make commercial films. Next, I particularly analyze Feng’s first New Year film, The Dream Factory, which shows Feng’s approach of combining entertainment and social criticism in the film. Finally, I will analyze the popularity of his New Year films from an ‘auteur’ perspective. / text

Informed by previous research from both the teacher efficacy and data-driven educational reform literatures, this study sought to identify whether teachers’ sense of efficacy for their practice was related to their attitudes toward and use of data-based pedagogical techniques. Data use was operationalized in two ways. First, data use referred to teachers’ use of any type of systematically-collected data (e.g. student performance on yearly state tests, demographic information). Data use was also operationalized as teachers’ use of a newly implemented student assessment system that provided teachers with student performance data and resources for working with those data. This study also examined whether associations between teacher efficacy and teachers’ use of data were related to student achievement. Participants were fourth and fifth grade teachers (n= 96) and students (n= 2042) from 46 elementary schools in a large, urban school district. Sources providing data for this study included student-, teacher-, and school-level demographic information, measures of student achievement in reading and math, a survey administered to assess teachers’ efficacy and their data-use related attitudes and behavior, and computer-generated use logs which captured teachers’ use of the student assessment system. Multilevel modeling was used to explore these relationships. The results revealed that teacher efficacy was related to aspects of teachers’ use of data, though these relationships varied depending on the operational definition of data use. Teachers’ efficacy was positively related to teachers’ use of data in general, but negatively related to their use of the new student assessment system. The latter finding may be at least partially attributable to difficulties this district experienced when implementing the assessment system. Additional analyses demonstrated that interactions between teacher efficacy and aspects of their data use were positively related to student achievement in reading when reading achievement was covaried for prior performance. This study concludes that teacher efficacy appears to be related to teachers’ attitudes toward and use of data, though the exact nature of these relationships should be clarified further with additional research, particularly given the implementation obstacles this district faced during the implementation of the data system (Wayman, Cho, & Shaw, 2009b). Further, these factors appear to be associated with positive student achievement outcomes in reading, a finding that should also be explored at greater length. Explorations such as these lend needed insight into the factors that determine whether teachers adopt or reject data-driven educational reforms and whether student achievement outcomes might benefit from teachers’ attention to these types of data. / text

<p>Under den senare delen av 90-talet ökade utgifterna för sjukfrånvaron i Sverige lavinartat och 2003 uppgick dem till 40 miljarder kronor. Dagens politiker och myndigheter jobbar fokuserat med att få ner ohälsan i Sverige och med dem även kostnaderna. Ett viktigt led i att minska kostnaderna samt att undvika en liknande utveckling i framtiden är att studera sjukfrånvarons ersättningssystem samt de faktorer som påverkar ersättningen.</p><p>Syftet med uppsatsen är att med hjälp av tidigare forskning, ekonomisk teori och regressionsanalyser studera vilka faktorer som påverkar sjukskrivningsfrekvensen. Jag undersöker även om sjukfrånvarofrekvensen är känslig för ändringar av nivån på ersättningen vid sjukfrånvaro samt om en glesbygdspåverkan förändrar ett eventuellt förhållande mellan sjukfrånvarofrekvensen och övriga undersökta faktorer.</p><p>Mitt resultat visar på att det finns signifikanta samband mellan sjukfrånvarofrekvensen och de undersökta faktorerna. En av dessa faktorer är sjuk- och aktivitetsersättningen, den uppvisar ett positivt samband med sjukfrånvarofrekvensen. Detta beror bland annat på att sjukersättningen används som en ventil till sjukförsäkringen när denna blir alltför överhettad.</p><p>Tidigare studier har visat att förändringar i ersättningsnivåer ger en stark inverkan på benägenheten att sjukskriva sig. Utvecklingen under 90-talet visar på att dessa tendenser till nyttomaximering mellan sjukförsäkringen och arbetslöshetsersättningen förekommer. Mina antaganden om effekten av 2003 års reform, som minskade ersättningen för arbetsoförmåga hos arbetslösa vid sjukdom, var i enlighet med ovan nämnda resonemang. Mina regressionsresultat för arbetslöshet var dock inte signifikanta och säkerställer därför inte mina antaganden. Däremot visar mina regressionsresultat på att 2003 års reform har påverkat sambandet mellan sjukfrånvarofrekvensen och arbetsmarknadspolitiska åtgärder.</p><p>När det gäller hur glesbygdspåverkan inverkar på sjukfrånvarofrekvensens förhållande till de undersökta faktorerna kan jag inte med statistisk säkerhet påvisa att variabeln glesbygd haft någon inverkan på förhållandet.</p>

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