CLASSROOM MANAGEMENT STRATEGIES AND INCLUSIVE LEARNING AMONG STUDENTS WITH DIVERSE LEARNING ABILITIES: A MIXED-METHODS STUDY OF PUBLIC SECONDARY SCHOOLS IN UMERKOT, SINDH, PAKISTAN

Abstract

International commitments such as the 1994 Salamanca Statement, Article 24 of the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (2006), and Sustainable Development Goal 4 (2015) have repositioned inclusive education as a right rather than a discretionary accommodation. Pakistan's Article 25-A, together with the Sindh Right of Children to Free and Compulsory Education Act (2013) and the Sindh Empowerment of Persons with Disabilities Act (2018), extends this commitment to the provincial level. Translating these mandates into daily classroom practice, however, remains difficult in resource-constrained rural districts such as Umerkot. This study investigates how four dimensions of classroom management — spatial and physical organisation, behavioural regulation, instructional pacing, and socio-emotional climate — relate to the access, participation, and achievement of students with diverse learning abilities in the public secondary schools of Umerkot's four tehsils (Umerkot, Kunri, Samaro, and Pithoro). A convergent parallel mixed-methods design, situated within a pragmatist paradigm, guides the study. The quantitative strand will survey 120 secondary school teachers across 24 stratified sample schools; the qualitative strand will draw on semi-structured interviews with 12 teachers and 4 headmasters and structured observation across 8 classrooms. Quantitative data will be analysed through Pearson correlation and multiple linear regression; qualitative data will undergo Braun and Clarke's six-phase thematic analysis; the two strands will be integrated through a joint display matrix. The study is theoretically anchored in Vygotsky's social constructivism, Bronfenbrenner's ecological systems theory, and Universal Design for Learning. By generating context-specific empirical evidence from an under-researched rural district of Sindh, the study is intended to inform teacher-training design and provincial inclusive-education policy. Data collection had not yet concluded at the time of this submission; this article accordingly reports the study's rationale, theoretical grounding, and methodology in full, with the empirical results to be reported in a follow-up article once fieldwork is complete.

DOI: https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.22122972