Teachers’ Classroom Management Strategies in Teaching English in an Inclusive Elementary School

Inclusive education is one of some policies initiated in order to provide quality and equality in terms of education for everyone including children with special needs. Its implementation is still considered new and often controversial. One of the most debatable issues in inclusive education is classroom management, which has been addressed numerously and is widely believed as one of the major causes of stress and insecurities for teachers. Therefore, the aims of this research are reveal: (1) the teachers‘ classroom management strategies in teaching English in an inclusive elementary school, and (2) how the teachers accommodate various needs of students with special needs in the classrooms. As a descriptive study, this research was conducted in an inclusive elementary school in Purwoketo, Banyumas Regency, Central Java Province, Indonesia. The main subjects of this research were two English teachers who teach at inclusive classes of 4B, 5B, and 6B and the school principal as an additional research subject. The data were collected through classroom observations and interviews. The data were recorded, transcribed, and analyzed using the six steps of qualitative data analysis proposed by Creswell (2012). The results of the research show that classroom management strategies the teachers applied in the inclusive school context revolve around two major elements: physical and instructional management and behavioral management. In physical and instructional management, the teachers constructed and applied general and specific classroom rules, and created classroom routines. While in behavioral management, the teachers gave verbal reaction, reinforcers, and direct costs. Furthermore, the teachers‘ instructional accommodations in teaching three language elements namely vocabulary, spelling, and writing were still limited. Keywords: classroom, education, inclusive, management, special needs, strategie