**5. Conclusion**

The results showed that the Afghan undergraduate students had a positive attitude towards coeducation. The vast majority of students believed that coeducation had a wide variety of personal and social effects such as improving students' academic confidence, communication skills, preparing them for real life, promoting gender equality and reducing gender biases and stereotypes. However, less than half of the participants perceived coeducation to be of negative effects, e.g., distracting students and male students' domination of class activities. The study revealed that students' gender had a significant impact on their attitudes towards coeducation. The students' ethnicity did not significantly impact their views of positive and negative effects of coeducation.

Positive attitudes towards the learning environment are essential and help students maximize their learning and become lifelong learners [56]. Given the findings of the current study, the authors recommend the Ministry of Higher Education – the managing and policy making body of the Afghan government – to require all higher education institutions to change their single-sex classes to mixed-gender ones after a thorough investigation of other stakeholders' perspectives, i.e., lecturers, students,

administrators and the public. The authors suggest further studies on coeducation in the context of Afghanistan. They should employ a larger sample from various public and private higher education institutions. Besides survey questionnaires, interviews with students and teachers as well as observations in classes should be used to gain more insights about how students and teachers feel about coeducation. Moreover, studies to find ways to minimize negative effects of coeducation and maximize students' experiences in coed environments are recommended. In order to minimize negative effects of coeducation, authors suggest Afghan university lecturers to create a learning environment that ensures equal engagement of both female and male students in the learning process and encourage them to work together to maximize their learning.
