The World is Flat: Modeling Educators’ Misconduct with Cellular Automata

Misconduct in education is a serious problem internationally. As the education sector grows, so does the scale of misconduct. The large bureaucratic apparatus, overregulation, outdated and unclear rules, and poor audit create opportunities for abuse. The blending of public sector, private firms, and personal interests of educators and education bureaucrats leads to collusion and evolvement of different forms of misconduct, especially widespread in large university systems and school districts. Corruption and other forms of misconduct may be modeled in large educational organizations with strong vertical and horizontal ties with the help of cellular automata. This paper offers a theoretical framework and a methodology based on cellular automata to study corruption in large educational organizations, including school districts and state university systems. The presented methodology is based on cellular automata. In the essence of cellular automata are different programming characteristics designed to predict future misconduct. Starting with different cases or combinations of behavior on the workplace and working environment as initial conditions, the process of cellular automation simulates behavior of educators and results in images that depict likely future developments in educators’ misconduct within educational and bureaucratic organizations. Applicability of the offered methodology and its value is in modeling, simulation, and control.