Student incivility in higher education of Afghanistan: Lecturers’ perspectives

Abstract The study investigated lecturers’ perceptions of student incivility in higher education of Afghanistan. It examined students’ behaviors that lecturers considered uncivil as well as causes and consequences of students’ uncivil behaviors. It also explored strategies lecturers used to address student incivility and to what extent they rated the strategies effective. A survey questionnaire and interview protocols with open-ended questions were used to collect data for the study. Descriptive and inferential statistics, and thematic analysis, were utilized to analyze the data. The study revealed that the participants considered threatening, harassing comments, belittling, making waseta, complaining about a lecturer, and cheating on exams as extremely uncivil behaviors. The participants believed that society, students, lecturers, and institutions were the major sources of student incivility. They believed that student incivility had negative impacts on learning environment (e.g. interrupted the normal flow of the class), lecturers (reduced their interest in teaching), and students (e.g. made them lose their concentration). Lecturers used a number of strategies including friendly verbal reminders and talking to a student in private and in front of other students to deal with student incivility, and they suggested individual and institutional strategies to cope with students’ uncivil behaviors. The study recommends universities to develop a policy to address incivility in order to create a safe learning environment for lecturers, students, and other stakeholders.


PUBLIC INTEREST STATEMENT
This research examined university lecturers' views about factors and consequences of students' uncivil behaviors at universities in Afghanistan.It also explored strategies lecturers used to deal with students' uncivil behaviors and to what extent they were considered effective.The study showed that lecturers rated 30 behaviors of students uncivil to varying degrees.For instance, lecturers believed that students' harassing comments, threatening a student or a lecturer, and cheating on exams were the most uncivil behaviors.The lecturers believed that society, universities, lecturers, and students contributed to student incivility in the classroom and on campuses.They used various strategies (e.g.talking to the perpetrators in private) to deal with student incivility.They also suggested numerous individual and institutional mechanisms to cope with student incivility in the classroom and on campuses.

Introduction
University lecturers face a growing number of challenges to carry out their teaching duties and responsibilities, and student incivility is one of them (Lampman et al., 2009;Lashley & De Menses, 2001;Suplee et al., 2008).Incivility refers to rude behaviors that disrupt the learning process (Davis, 2013;Feldmann, 2001).Nilson and Jackson (2004) define incivility as any disruptive behavior or act that takes place in and outside the classroom.According to Galbraith (2008), incivility appeared when students or lecturers did not maintain norms of mutual respect in a learning environment.Anger, fear, and hostility may develop between students and lecturers when they fail to recognize incivility and violate norms of mutual respect.According to Mohammadipour et al. (2018), incivility can be committed by lecturers and students.It can be found in student-student, lecturer-student, student-lecturer, or lecturer-lecturer interactions (Luparell, 2011).The most frequently cited incidences of student incivility are sleeping during lectures, talking with peers during lectures, using phones, being late or leaving early, and making harassing comments (Ballard et al., 2018).In the current study, the author defines student incivility as rude and disrespectful behaviors and acts that are disruptive in and outside the classroom.
In the 1960s, higher education in Afghanistan boomed, and it was of significant quality.It yielded a substantial number of educated individuals in the late 1960s and in the 70s (Giustozzi, 2010).Unfortunately, the Soviet Union's invasion of Afghanistan disrupted the development in the country (Karp, 1986).Schools and universities were destroyed; many educated people were murdered, and many were forced to leave the country (Roof, 2014;Sau, 2002).After the withdrawal of the Soviet Union, civil wars started in the country, which destroyed almost all universities.The rise of the Taliban to power (1996)(1997)(1998)(1999)(2000)(2001) further escalated the situation and brought higher education to a standstill in the country.During the Taliban Regime, women were stripped of all their social activities, and education was banned for them; they were barred from studying at schools and universities (Chuang, 2004;Noori et al., 2023;Orfan, 2021).
During the involvement of the international community in Afghanistan (2001-2021), higher education of Afghanistan witnessed extensive changes and development (Orfan et al., 2022;Welch & Wahidyar, 2020).A growing number of public and private universities provided opportunities for a substantially increasing number of students including women to pursue their higher education.Around 6,000 students were pursuing their higher education at six universities in 2001 (Berger & Thoma, 2015), which were very similar to madrasas (religious schools) (Ansary, 2012).On the other hand, over 400,000 students were pursuing their higher education in a wide number of disciplines at 39 public and 129 private universities in 2020 (MoHE, 2021).Women accounted for almost zero percent of student population in higher education in 2001 while over 110,000 women were pursuing their higher education in a wide range of majors including medicine, computer science, agriculture, engineering, and journalism by early 2021 (MoHE, 2021).However, higher education still faces challenges.For instance, higher education in Afghanistan is a centralized system that has affected universities' administrative and financial autonomy as well as their ability to develop innovative programs (Berger & Thoma, 2015).There is a lack of budget to fund new initiatives and programs and research projects at both public and private universities (Babury & Hayward, 2013).Gender-based harassment, violence, and discrimination are widespread in both public and private universities (Orfan et al., 2022).Incivility in classrooms and on campuses is another challenge that universities have been dealing with for years.There have been many reports of incidences of incivility by students and lecturers in and outside the classroom at universities.For instance, the author, who was a lecturer in a public university in Afghanistan at the time of conducting the study, frequently heard other lecturers complaining about students' behaviors in and outside the classroom including playing on their phones during lectures, coming late, leaving early, asking for extra grade on the phone, and coming over to lecturers' home.He also heard students complaining about lecturers' behaviors such as unfair grading, grading students based on waseta, 1 answering phone calls in class, and arriving late to class.
Student incivility is an academic problem in higher education institutions (Rad et al., 2016), and it can be influenced by each country's unique cultural and contextual factors.Moreover, higher education of Afghanistan has gone through several decades of conflicts, where the nature of student incivility and its factors are different from other countries.Understanding student incivility Afghanistan context is crucial for developing effective interventions.Only one study (Orfan, 2022) examined perceptions of students about faculty incivility in higher education Afghanistan.However, to the best of the author's knowledge, no study explored lecturers' perspectives about student incivility.Thus, the current research studies perceptions of lecturers about student incivility, its factors and impacts, and the strategies they used to address students' uncivil behaviors.The findings of the study will inform the development of institutional policies and guidelines to address incivility effectively.They will also help lecturers deal with student incivility through raising awareness and incorporating specific expectations on proper behaviors in the course syllabi.Moreover, the study contributes to growing body of discourse on incivility in educational settings in the context of a conflict-stricken Islamic country.

Literature review
Researchers have grouped incivility in higher education into less and more serious behaviors (Connelly, 2009;Hernandez & Fister, 2001).Less serious behaviors were the ones that were annoying to lecturers (e.g., not attending class sessions, sleeping in the class, and not taking notes during a lecture).On the other hand, more serious uncivil behaviors consist of acts that are of hostile and threatening nature including intimidation, stalking, verbal attacks, and physical attacks (Knepp, 2012).Nawaz et al. (2018) investigated student dysfunctional behavior in a Pakistani university.They collected data from 25 students who were attending the University of Sindh based in Jamshoro, Pakistan.They used hermeneutical phenomenological approach to analyze their data.They concluded that frequent incidence of less serious forms of incivility by students could disrupt the learning environment and lead students and lecturers to lose their concentration.
The severity of incivility is subjective, and it differs from context to context Knepp (2012).For instance, requesting a lecturer by a person of authority (e.g., governor, mayor, chancellor, vice chancellor, or dean) to give and extra score (waseta) to a student may be more uncivil for an American lecturer than for a lecturer from Afghanistan.At the time of the current research, waseta was a practice in many public universities in which a lecturer offered extra score for a student at the request of her/his colleagues, deans, chancellors, relatives, or a person of authority (Orfan, 2022).A student's behavior (eating during a lecture) may be considered uncivil by a lecturer while it may not bother another lecturer in the same educational setting (Alberts et al., 2010) Many studies found that most students' uncivil behaviors were less serious.For example, the most frequently cited students' uncivil behaviors were coming late to the class, sending messages, side conversation, sleeping, and irrelevant use of electronic devices in the classroom (Ausbrooks et al., 2011;Bell et al., 2010;Black et al., 2011;Elder et al., 2010).On the other hand, more severe students' uncivil behaviors occurred less frequently than less severe ones.For example, Bjorklund and Rehling (2011) explored American faculty members' experience of student incivility.They used a survey questionnaire to collect data from 153 faculty members from a Midwestern university in the USA.The authors found that faculty members experienced less serious student incivility more frequently than more serious ones.Alberts et al. (2010) examined classroom incivilities among early career geography faculty teaching at universties in the USA.They used a survey and openended questions to collect data from 393 pre-tenure geography faculty members.The authors reported that most of their participants experienced minor incivilities and a small number of them experienced more severe forms of student incivility (e.g., hostility).
Recognizing factors and causes of students' uncivil behaviors can help institutions and lecturers to deal with them effectively (Williams, 2017).Various factors can contribute to student incivility.Lecturers cause students to display uncivil behaviors.Rad et al. (2016) explored causes of incivility in Iranian nursing students.They found that lecturers' personality traits, their lack of skills and experience and their uncivil behaviors made students to display incivility.Similarly, Rauf (2016) comparatively explored incivility in public and private universities in Pakistan.He concluded that lecturers' indifference to students' uncivil behaviors encouraged them to display more violent incivility.Altmiller (2012) came to similar conclusions; lecturers' inappropriate response to classroom incivility led to more serious uncivil behaviors by students.McNamara (2012) asserted that the abuse of power by lecturers paved the way for student incivility.Hall (2004) argued that lecturers' unfair treatment of students resulted in student incivility.
Various student-related factors are prevalent in the literature.Rad et al. (2016) found that students' efforts to attract attention, non-educational involvement, lack of motivation and their personality traits resulted in incivility.Clark (2008) found that stress and students' feeling of entitlement caused them to commit incivility.Entitled students expect lecturers to modify their teaching practices to satisfy their wishes (Chowning & Campbell, 2009), and they resort to incivility when their wishes are satiated (Greenberger et al., 2008;Kopp & Finney, 2013).According to Robertson (2012) students felt stressed and anxious when they failed to keep a balance between their university studies and personal life.Consequently, they displayed their stress in uncivil manners.Similarly, Forini (2008) and Harris (2011) noted that stress and time constraints (e.g., deadlines) resulted in student incivility.Institutions can contribute to student incivility.An institution's view of students also leads to student incivility.For instance, a university, which sees students as customers, may give students the idea that lecturers are service providers.Thus, they do not take the responsibility of their own learning, and they feel that they are entitled to behave less courteously to achieve their goals (e.g., getting a good grade) (Burke et al., 2013).A lack of specific policies on incivility can result in incivility (Bray & Del Favero, 2004).For example, Alberts et al. (2010) stated that policies in most universities addressed only the most serious uncivil behaviors of students.Clark (2013) asserted that society could contribute to student incivility since some students are exposed to uncivil acts in their families and communities.
Student incivility can negatively impact both lecturers' and students' personal and academic lives (Hirschy & Braxton, 2004).Khan et al. (2022) studied causes and impact of student incivility at a public university in Pakistan.They found that students' uncivil behaviors against other students (e.g., bullying, harassing) damaged the victims' self-esteem and excluded them from group activities.They reported that a small instance of incivility sometimes caused a huge conflict on campus.According to Bjorklund and Rehling (2011), student incivility hurts student-lecturer relationship and contributes to lecturers' stress and dissatisfaction with their job.Other studies (e.g., Kolanko et al., 2006;Schaeffer, 2013) reported that student incivility increased lecturers' stress, decreased their confidence, and hurt them emotionally.Dalpezzo and Jett (2010) stated that student incivility could cause physical, emotional, and psychological tension in lecturers.Luparell (2007) investigated the impact of student incivility on lecturers.The found that lecturers' selfesteem decreased, and they became less confident in their teaching skills.She also reported that a few faculty members left their profession as a result of student incivility.
A wide variety of strategies are presented in the literature to curtail student incivility.Examining the impact of a context-based educational intervention on Iranian students' perception of incivility, Farzi et al. (2021) concluded that interventions such as facilitating journal club and students' self-learning about uncivil behaviors raised their awareness about incivility, which may lead students to prevent from incivility.Similarly, Rad and Moonaghi (2016) examined Iranian lecturers' use of strategies to manage student incivility.They revealed that lecturers used a number of strategies including establishing rapport with students, training through role playing, reflection and creating interactive educational environments to deal with student incivility.Boysen (2012) found that students rated direction and confrontation as the most effective and "turning a blind eye" as the least effective approaches to handle student incivility.Alberts et al. (2010) revealed that private conversations with students and calling them by their names were effective while shaming students was ineffective in managing student incivility.Other strategies including friendly verbal reminders (Kerber et al., 2012), particular policies on proper behaviors (Nworie & Haughton, 2008), working with students to develop a code of conduct for the class (Knepp, 2012), keeping eye contact with students and being well-organized (Meyers, 2003) were used by lecturers in different countries to deal with student incivility.
There is little literature on incivility in higher education of Afghanistan.Only one study (Orfan, 2022) examined students' perspectives about faculty incivility in higher education of Afghanistan.The findings showed that students rated various lecturers' behaviors uncivil to varying degrees.For instance, they considered these acts as the most uncivil: grading students based on waseta (connection), cursing students, making too hard or tricky exam questions, preferring one student to other students, threatening to fail a student for not complying with lecturers' demands and harassing comments (racial, ethnic, gender).Students experienced these acts to varying degrees, and "making too hard or tricky exams" and "grading students based on waseta (connection)" were the most frequently experienced uncivil acts by students.A majority of studies on incivility in higher education were conducted in the developed and developing countries.To the best of the author's knowledge, no study examined student incivility in war-stricken countries like Afghanistan.The current study investigates lecturers' perceptions of student incivility, and it attempts to answer the following questions.
(1) What students' behaviors do Afghanistan public university lecturers consider as uncivil?
(2) What do university lecturers perceive as the factors of student incivility?
(3) What do university lecturers perceive as consequences of student incivility?(4) What strategies have university lecturers used to deal with student incivility?
(5) To what extent have university lecturers considered these coping strategies effective?

Design
A mixed method approach was used to collect data for the study.A mixed approach provides a more complete picture of a research problem than quantitative or qualitative alone (Creswell, 2009).A structured survey questionnaire was used to answer research questions 1, 4 and 5. Interviews were employed to answer research questions 2 and 3 and to substantiate the findings with respect to strategies lecturers used to address student incivility.It is noteworthy that the author was committed to be objective throughout the research process.He consciously avoided the influence of his personal biases on the study's design, data collection, and analysis.

Participants
The participants of the study were 289 lecturers who were teaching in different undergraduate programs (e.g., engineering, social science, natural science, and economics) at 12 public universities in Afghanistan.The author contacted two lecturers in each university through email and social networking sites and shared the study and its purposes with them.He requested them to complete the questionnaire and share the link of the questionnaire with their colleagues to take part in the study.Most of the participants (82.3%) were male while around 18% were female.Women made up a small percentage of faculty population (14%) in public higher education of Afghanistan at the time of the current study (MoHE, 2021), which may account for the disparity between women and men participants.Most of the participants (64.7%) held a master's degree followed by lecturers with a bachelor's degree (29.8%) at the time of the study.A small number of them (5.5%) had a doctoral degree at the time of the study.It is noteworthy that having a PhD is not a requirement for academic employment (e.g., lectureship) in Afghanistan public universities due to a lack of individuals with a PhD degree in the country.The Ministry of Higher Education has provided opportunities for hundreds of lecturers to obtain their master's degree and PhD in Afghanistan and overseas.Most of the participants (82%) had 0-10 years of teaching experience while 18% of them had 11-20 years of teaching experience in undergraduate programs at the time of the study.Furthermore, 10 lecturers from Takhar University were selected for qualitative data.The author was working as a lecturer at Takhar University at the time of the study; therefore, it was convenient for him to collect the qualitative data from this institution.Most of the qualitative participants were male (70%), and women accounted for 30% (3) of the sample.These participants were teaching in various undergraduate programs (e.g., engineering, agriculture, education, law, and economics) at Takhar University at the time of the study.

Instrument
The author used a questionnaire to collect data for the study.A number of surveys have been developed to examine incivility in higher education settings.For example, the Survey of Academic Incivility developed by Indiana University has been widely utilized to explore perceptions of students about incivility (McKinne & Martin, 2010;Weger, 2018).However, these instruments lacked items relevant to the context of Afghanistan (e.g., grading students based on waseta).To ensure that the author included relevant items in the questionnaire, he used a focus group discussion (FGD) to identify context-specific items.He had a FGD with five lecturers from Takhar University.They were required to consent to the discussion by signing a letter that ensured them of their voluntary participation, and that their responses would be kept confidential.The participants of the FGD discussed the following questions.
(1) What students' behaviors do you consider uncivil?
(2) What are the causes and effects of student incivility?
(3) What strategies have you used to deal with student incivility?(4) Is there anything else you would like to say about student incivility?
The author was writing down notes while the participants were discussing the questions.He developed 30 questionnaire items from the output of the FGD.To make sure that the instrument captured various aspects of students' uncivil behaviors and strategies used to address with them, the author carried out literature review to identify more questionnaire items.He adapted 12 items from other studies (Table 1).
The questionnaire consisted of a short introduction and four parts.In the introduction, the author presented the definition of incivility used for the current study and the purposes of the study.The first part with 3 items sought the participants' demographic information: gender, education, and years of teaching experience.The second part with 30 items elicited the participants' responses about severity of students' uncivil behaviors on a five-point Likert Scale (1 = Not uncivil; 2 = somewhat uncivil; 3 = quite uncivil; 4 = very uncivil; 5 = extremely uncivil).The third section with 12 items inquired the participants' use of strategies on a two-point Likert Scale (1=used; 2=never used).The last part with 12 items elicited the participants' response about the effectiveness of the strategies on a three-point Likert Scale (1=not effective; 2=somewhat effective; 3=very effective).The questionnaire had an open-ended question "Is there anything else you would like to share about student incivility?"Since very few participants shared their experiences of student incivility very briefly, the author did not analyze and report them.The questionnaire was pretty long (57 items), and it could account for why very few participants answered the open-ended question.
The author translated the questionnaire into Farsi (the lingua franca of Afghanistan) since English is a foreign language and many of the participants were not proficient enough in English to make sense of the questionnaire items (Orfan & van de Weijer, 2020).To ensure that the English questionnaire was translated as accurately as possible and the translated items conveyed the same concept as the English ones, one of the author's colleagues in the English Department was asked to juxtapose both versions of the questionnaire.The questionnaire was revised based on his comments.The Farsi questionnaire was read by two faculty members at the Department of Farsi for improvement, and the problematic items were revised based on their comments.The researcher randomly selected 20 lecturers for pilot testing from Takhar University to measure the reliability of the questionnaire items.A copy of the questionnaire was sent to them; however, 13 of them returned the completed questionnaire.SPSS version 26.0 was used to run the reliability test.The results showed that the Cronbach's alpha for the student incivility was 0.907 (Table 2), which indicates high internal consistency of the items (Taber, 2018).Furthermore, the Cronbach's alpha for strategies and effectiveness of strategies was 0.643 and 0.653, respectively.A number of studies (e.g., Hair et al., 2010;Taber, 2018;Ursachi et al., 2015;Wim et al., 2008) reported that a value of Cronbach's alpha above 6 is acceptable.Therefore, the author concluded that the items were appropriate for the study.To obtain a deeper view of lecturers about student incivility, the author also utilized an interview protocol to collect data for the study.The protocol contained open-ended questions that sought the participants' responses about factors and consequences of student incivility and the strategies they used to deal with students' uncivil behaviors.He used the following open-ended questions and some follow-up questions to prompt the participants to elaborate on their responses.
(1) What are the factors of student incivility?
(2) What are the consequences of student incivility?
(3) What strategies have you used to handle student incivility?

Procedure
The Research Committee of Takhar University approved the study and its instruments (survey questionnaire and interview protocol) on 5 November 2020 (#3245) for data collection.The author designed the questionnaire using Google survey tool (Google form) and used snowball sampling technique to collect data for the study.The link of the questionnaire was shared with lecturers in various universities through emails and social networking cites (e.g., Facebook).They were requested to complete the questionnaire and share the link with their colleagues to participate in the study.The questionnaire was available online for a period of one month, January 03 -2 February 2021.The participants were required to read the consent form and express their agreement to participate in the study by ticking a box containing "I agree to participate in the study" before proceeding to complete the questionnaire.
For qualitative data, the author randomly selected 10 participants from Takhar University, where the author was working as a lecturer at the time of the data collection.It was convenient for him to collect data from Takhar University.Due to an increase in insecurity in the region, and poor Internet connection, the author did not collect qualitative data from other universities.The author obtained a copy of the listserv from Faculty Affairs Office.He wrote their names and put them in a bowl from which he picked 10 names.The author contacted each participant and invited her/him for an interview.All the participants expressed their willingness to take part in the qualitative part of the study.It is noteworthy that the author did not know whether these 10 lecturers completed the survey questionnaire.Neither the author inquired the participants whether they completed the questionnaire, nor they said if they completed the questionnaire.As requested by the participants, the interviews took place in their office.Before starting the interview, the author explained the study and its purpose to the interviewees, and gave them a copy of a consent letter, which informed them that their participation was voluntary and that their responses would be kept confidential.The participants agreed to participate in the study by reading and signing the consent letter.The researcher recorded the interviews by their permission.Where appropriate, follow-up questions were used to prompt the participants to expand on their responses.

Analysis
The author downloaded the quantitative data as an Excel sheet and numerically coded them.The data were examined to ensure that the participants completed the questionnaire appropriately.They were imported to SPSS version 26.0 for further analysis.Descriptive statistics were used to determine the frequency, the mean, the standard deviation of the data.Furthermore, thematic analysis was used to analyze the qualitative data (Braun & Clarke, 2006).
The author transcribed the interview recordings.He carefully listened to the audio recordings while simultaneously reading the transcripts to ensure the accuracy of the transcriptions.The author read and reread the transcripts in order to get familiarized with the data.during this stage, the author made notes to obtain a holistic understanding of the content of the interviews.Below is an example of notes the author made while reading the transcripts.
The participants seem to believe that lecturers contributed to student incivility in various ways.Some participants mentioned that some lecturers used traditional teaching methods in which students had little chance to get involved in the learning process.
In the second stage, the author carried out an initial round of coding.The author was concerned with addressing particular research questions and analyzed the data with this in mind.The author coded each part of data, which was relevant or captured something interesting about the research questions.The author used open coding.That is, the codes were identified and modified as the author worked through the coding process (Maguire & Delahunt, 2017).In the third phase, the author systematically reviewed the codes and looked for recurring patterns and connections among them.The codes were initially grouped together based on their relevance to research questions.In the next stage, the author examined and refined the preliminary themes ensuring that they reflected the patterns present in the data.For instance, the author placed "clear classroom policies and expectations" as a subtheme of the institutional strategies for dealing with student incivility.During this stage, the researcher placed it as a subtheme of individual strategies since it was more relevant to lecturer rather than the institution (see Table 5 & 6).In the fifth stage, the author validated the themes through revisiting the interview data.Each theme was compared against the interview transcripts to ensure that there was ample data to substantiate and support the themes.In this stage, the author removed a theme "administrator-related factor" since there was not sufficient evidence in the data to support it.Finally, the author named and reported the themes with supporting evidence mainly quotations from the transcripts.

Lecturers' perceptions of student incivility
Descriptive statistics were used to answer the first research question "What students' behaviors do Afghanistan public university lecturers consider as uncivil?"The mean rating of each behavior was calculated and ranked from most to least uncivil.As Table 3 shows, the participants rated students' behaviors uncivil to varying degrees.Six behaviors (i.e., threatening, harassing comments, belittling, making waseta, complaining about a lecturer and cheating on exams) received a mean score of over 4.20.That is, lecturers rated these behaviors extremely uncivil.Furthermore, 22 behaviors (e.g., littering in the classroom, poor personal hygiene and answering to calls) received a mean score of between 3.05 and 3.96, which means that lecturers rated these behaviors as very uncivil.Only two behaviors (i.e., challenging lecturers' knowledge and leaving class to answer a call) received a mean score of less than 2.80.That is, the participants rated them as quite uncivil.

Factors of student incivility
The analysis of the interview data with regard to the second research question "What do university lecturers perceive as the factors of student incivility?" yielded 81 initial codes, which were classified into four themes and each one was further categorized in subthemes.As Table 4 shows, the lecturers believed that four major factors accounted for student incivility.

Society
Around 71% of the participants stated that society played a key role in student incivility at the university.Out of 10 participants, 7 and 8 of them considered family and community as sources of student incivility, respectively.Participant 5 noted, "Almost all students have experienced some type of violence since Afghanistan has been dealing with conflicts for over four decades.It might be the reason why many students engage in incivility at the university."

Another interviewee pointed out:
Family plays more major role than any other factors.It is where students are trained and educated.I have experienced that those students coming from city and educated family are more civil than those coming from countryside and uneducated families" (Participant 3).

Student-related factor
The majority of the participants (7) stated that students committed incivility because they did not know what constituted incivility.Participant 6 said, "Many students particularly newcomers come to universities from remote areas of the country where school education is of low quality.Some of these students do not know how to behave with their teachers and peers in the classroom and on campus."Likewise, 60% believed that students' lack of motivation led to their incivility as participant 3 expressed, "There are some students in my classes who are not at all interested in the discipline.They were admitted to the current field through national entrance exam (Konkor) and now they have to study.They do not do the assignment, come late, and leave the class early."A small percentage of the participants stated that students' non-educational engagement (30%) and seeking attention in the classroom (20%) resulted in their incivility.Participant 4 noted, "In one of my courses, a few students fell asleep several times and I was very offended.I talked to them in person and learned that they had to work part-time and sometimes at night to provide for their families."

Another interviewee stated:
A few of my students ask questions and they start giving more details after I answer their questions (Participant 9).

Lecturer-related factors
Over half of the participants (60%) believed that lecturers' lack of expertise in the content and classroom management led to student incivility as participant 1 said, "If lecturers are not an expert in topics they teach, they cannot attract students' attention to their lessons and they cannot manage the class effectively.Consequently, they will not be able to deal with student incivility."Out of 10 participants, 8 of them considered lecturers' personality (e.g., intolerance) as a factor for student incivility.Participant 5 stated, "Lecturers should tolerate minor mistakes of students in the class.If a lecturer punishes students for their minor mistakes, they may engage in more uncivil acts."Likewise, 70% of the participants believed that a lecturer's uncivil behaviors (e.g., unfair grading, discrimination, and insults) led to student incivility.

Institution-related factors
Most of the participants (70%) stated that a lack of policy with respect to incivility at the university level and students' lack of understanding of university rules (60%) led to student incivility.Participant 1 stated, "The university does not have a policy to address student incivility.Moreover, students especially newcomers do not know university rules and the university has not initiated any programs to educate students on the rules and laws.Thus, students engage in incivility."

Consequences of student incivility
The analysis of the interview data with respect to the third research question "What do university lecturers perceive as the consequences of student incivility?" resulted in 48 primary codes and they were grouped into three categories.That is, the participants believed that student incivility negatively affected the learning environment, lecturers, and students.Most of the participants (8) reported that student incivility interrupted the normal flow of the class, slowed down the teaching process, took away the focus of the class, and made the classroom environment unpleasant.Participant 7 noted, "In the middle of my lesson delivery, two students started laughing out loud.They attracted everyone's attention, and it took me quite some time to redirect students' attention to my presentation." The participants also reported that student incivility could have negative impacts on lecturers.A vast majority of them (9) believed that student incivility reduced lecturers' interest in teaching, hurt their feelings, made them feel less worthy, reduced their self-confidence, affected their performance, and negatively affected lecturer-student relationship.Participant 4 stated, "In my first year of teaching at the

Strategies used to address student incivility
The author used descriptive analysis to answer the fourth research question "What strategies have the university lecturers used to deal with student incivility?"As Table 5 shows, the participants used various strategies to deal with student incivility.Ninety-five percent verbally reminded students who committed incivility while around 79% privately talked to a student about her/his uncivil behavior.
Approximately 73% and 71% talked to the perpetrator in front of peers and incorporated policies on students' proper behaviors, respectively.Sixty-two percent ordered perpetrators to stop particular behaviors, while almost 54% asked perpetrators to leave the class.Around 39% joked about an incivility with students.Moreover, 28.3% and 26% involved administrators and perpetrators' family members to address the incivility, respectively.Twenty-six percent turned a blind eye to a perpetrator's uncivil behaviors.A small number of participants sent the perpetrators an email about their behaviors (9.1%) and threatened to deduct points from the perpetrators' grade (8.2%).
In addition, the interview data with respect to strategies yielded 35 codes, which were classified into two themes, and were further classified into subthemes (Table 6).

Individual strategies
Most of the participants (70%) suggested that lecturers could curb student incivility through the use of student-centered methods, engaging students in the learning activities, being wellprepared, and avoiding tricky exam questions.Participant 7 said, "When I engaged my students in the class, I observed very few cases of student incivility; however, students engaged in more uncivil behaviors (e.g., sleeping and using telephone) when I presented a lecture."Out of 10 participants, five of them believed that lecturers could prevent from student incivility through positive interaction (e.g., establishing close relationship, maintaining mutual respect).Participant 9 said, "Students engage in incivility when lecturers belittle them in front of their peers."A vast majority of the participants (80%) stated that lecturers could preclude from student incivility through having clear classroom policies and expectations as the participant 3 noted, "If students do not know what behaviors are considered uncivil by lecturers, how do you expect them not to engage in incivility?"

Institutional strategies
Most of the participants suggested two institutional strategies to cope with student incivility.Sixty percent stated that institutions should develop a policy on student incivility as participant 10 stated, "There is a need for a policy to address students' uncivil behaviors.If there is not a policy, we cannot understand and cope these behaviors well.If the faculties along with universities devise a policy, it will help a lot in addressing incivility and it will force students to observe them and avoid any uncivil behaviors."Furthermore, 90% believed that institutions should raise awareness about incivility on their campuses.Participant 3 stated, "Academic behaviors are learned; therefore, the university should provide workshops for students especially newcomers in order to educate them about academic behaviors."

Perceived effective coping strategies
The author used descriptive statistics to answer the fifth research question "To what extent have the university lecturers considered these strategies effective?"The mean rating of strategies was calculated and was ranked from most to least effective.As Table 7 shows, lecturers considered the strategies effective to varying extents.Two strategies (i.e., private conversation and friendly verbal reminders) received a mean score of over 2.70, which indicates that the participants perceived them as very effective.Behavior-related policy involving administrators and family members received a mean score of between 2.10 and 2.20.That is, the participants considered these strategies mildly effective.Moreover, seven strategies (i.e., sending an email, talking to a student in front of peers, asking a student to leave the class, joking about incivility.Turning a blind eye and threatening to deduct points) received a mean score of between 1.28 and 1.70. in other words, the participants rated these approaches somewhat effective.

Discussion
The study revealed that the participants rated various students' behaviors uncivil to varying degrees.They rated six behaviors extremely uncivil: threatening lecturers or students, harassing comments, belittling, making waseta, complaining about a lecturer and cheating on exams.They considered 22 behaviors of students (e.g., requesting extra score, laughing during the class, coming to the class late) as very uncivil, while they regarded two behaviors including "challenging lecturers" knowledge' and "leaving class to answer a call" as quite uncivil.These findings are inconsistent with those of the study by Vural and Bacıoğluii (2020) who found that Turkish lecturers considered playing with the cellphone, talking to friends loudly and a lack of motivation as the most uncivil behaviors.These differences can be accounted for by cultural differences (e.g., Ndazhaga, 2014) and various circumstances.For instance, compared to Turkey, Afghanistan has gone through several decades of conflicts, which have had destructive and detrimental effects on all sectors including higher education and its stakeholders including students (Noori et al., 2021).
Most of the participants believed that the society played a part in student incivility at the universities.This can be justified by the fact that Afghanistan has gone through numerous decades of war during which families experienced and observed various forms of violence and struggled with a variety of mental problems.Students coming from such families may consciously or subconsciously engage in incivility in the classroom or on campus.This finding corroborates the studies by Clark (2013) and Connelly (2009) who reported that incivility in society was a factor of student incivility at universities.The participants of the current study also stated that students' lack of knowledge and lack of motivation in their fields led students to engage in incivility.The author believes that students commit incivility if they do not know what it is.Unfortunately, the universities do not have programs to educate students, particularly newcomers, on incivility, as far as the author is concerned.Students are admitted to public universities through a national entrance exam (Konkor) in Afghanistan.Many of them are admitted to fields in which they are not interested at all.They have no choice but to study if they cannot afford to pursue their education in a private higher education institution.This may result in incivility including coming to the class late, leaving early, and not paying attention to lessons.A small number of the participants believed that students' engagement in non-educational tasks and attention-seeking resulted in their incivility.Some students are the sole breadwinners, and they have to work part-time on weekdays and full time on weekends to provide for their families.This may result in incivility in the classroom (e.g., sleeping and showing exhaustion).These findings are in consonance with those of the studies by Rad et al. (2016) and Kuhlenschmidt and Layne (1999).
A majority of the participants believed that lecturers' lack of expertise and teaching methods brought about incivility.This can be accounted for by the fact that in many public universities in Afghanistan, lecturers are required to teach courses in which they do not have much expertise due to the growing number of students and shortage of lecturers.When these lecturers cannot meet students' expectations and needs, students show their dissatisfaction and anger in uncivil ways.Furthermore, many lecturers in public universities frequently use traditional teaching methods (e.g., lectures), which may cause student incivility (e.g., sleepiness and doing irrelevant things in the class).These results are consistent with other studies (e.g., Bartsch & Cobern, 2003;Mann & Robinson, 2009;Twale & DeLuca, 2008), which found that traditional teaching approaches and lecturers' low expertise about the subject matter resulted in student incivility in the classroom.The participants also stated that lecturers' personality led to students' uncivil behaviors.This can be the case for some novice lecturers who do not have much experience of teaching and interaction with students.Furthermore, lecturers' uncivil behaviors (e.g., unfair grading, racist comments, discrimination, favoritism, and insults) caused students to engage in incivility.For instance, if a lecturer insults students in the class, they may engage in incivility to save their face.This finding is consistent with the result of the study by Natarajan et al. (2017) who reported that lecturers' uncivil behaviors contributed to incivility at Oman universities.However, it contradicts the study by Mohamed and MahdyAttia (2020) who concluded that lecturers' disruptive behaviors were not the major factor of student incivility at Zagazig University, Egypt.
The participants believed that lack of a specific policy and unawareness of the university rules led to student incivility.There is a policy "Non-Discrimination and Anti-Harassment Policy in Higher Education Institutions", which is of very general nature and addresses harassment and discrimination on campuses (Orfan et al., 2022).However, neither the Ministry nor the universities have developed a particular policy to address student incivility in the classroom and on campuses.First-year students are required to sign a letter containing a number of very general commitments at the time of registration.In most cases, students sign the letter without reading it.Furthermore, there are student discipline committees at the university and faculty levels, which convene a meeting when a severe case of incivility takes place.They take disciplinary actions based on the severity of incivility, which are subjective in many instances.These results support those of the research by Irwin and Cederblad (2017) and Alberts et al. (2010) who reported that a lack of specific policies contributed to student incivility.
The participants reported that student incivility impacted the learning environment.It interrupted the normal flow of the class, distracted students, slowed down teaching activities and disrupted the classroom atmosphere.These findings are similar with those of the study by Ibrahim and Qalawa (2016), who found that student incivility disrupted the learning environment and distracted both lecturers and students.The participants of the current study also believed that student incivility affected lecturer.It reduced lecturers' interest in teaching, hurt their feelings, and damaged the lecturer-student relationship.These are similar to the results of the study by Natarajan et al. (2017) who found that student incivility decreased lecturers' confidence and job satisfaction.Moreover, a student's incivility affected other students.It confused them, made them lose their concentration and reduced their interest in learning activities.These results are consistent with those of the studies by Vuolo (2018) and Segrist et al. (2018) who reported that a student's uncivil behaviors reduced students' engagement and their interest in learning.
The study revealed that lecturers used a number of strategies to handle student incivility.Most of them used verbal reminder, private conversation, talking to the offender in the class, behaviorrelated policies, stopping the offender, and expelling from the class to prevent student incivility.The results are inconsistent with those of the study by Erdem and Kocyigit (2019) who reported that verbal warning, turning a blind eye and punishment were the most frequently used strategies to prevent student incivility.Less than half of the participants used other strategies (i.e., joking and engaging other people, ignoring, sending an email, and threatening to deduct points) to deal with student incivility.Unlike Erdem and Kocyigit's (2019) findings, the study revealed that a small number of lecturers used "turning a blind eye" to deal with students' uncivil behaviors.
The participants suggested a number of individual and institutional strategies to address student incivility.Individual strategies included using student centered and engaging methods, respectful interaction with students and having clear classroom policies and expectations.The results are similar to those of the study by Kassem and Mohammed (2019) who reported that students' engagement in the learning process, respectful interaction with them and clear classroom expectations reduced their incivility.Institutional strategies included developing a specific policy and raising awareness about incivility to students, particularly to newcomers.The participants rated the strategies effective to varying degrees.They considered private conversation with student and friendly verbal reminder as the most effective strategy to cope with student incivility.These results are consistent with the study by Boysen (2012) who reported that the more personal responses to student incivility were more effective than other strategies.The participants regarded 8 strategies (e.g., engaging others and syllabus policies) as mildly effective, while they considered strategies that involved force (e.g., threat) as the least effective techniques to handle student incivility.

Conclusion
The study offers valuable insights about the nature of student incivility in higher education of Afghanistan.The findings showed that lecturers considered a wide variety of students' behaviors uncivil to varying degrees.For instance, they rated threatening lecturers or students, harassing comments, belittling lecturers, or students, making waseta, and cheating on exams as the most uncivil.The participants believed that students, lecturers, institutions, and society accounted for student incivility.That is, the problem is of a multifaceted nature, and it requires a joint action to be addressed.Moreover, the study highlighted the negative effects of student incivility including a less conductive learning environment, lecturers' stress, and potentially hindered academic progress for students.The Ministry of Higher Education or institutions of higher education should engage these stakeholders when they plan to develop policies, guidelines, or conduct interventions to address incivility in academic settings.Moreover, lecturers should address incivility in a way that not only mitigates negative behaviors but also fosters a positive and respectful educational environment in which both lecturers and students feel safe and thrive.The study sheds light on strategies lecturers used to address student incivility ranging from private conversations with students to verbal reminders to them.Understanding how lecturers handle incivility can inform training and support lecturers in managing these situations effectively.
The author collected data from 12 public universities using snowball sampling technique.The sample size is also small.Therefore, the findings may not be generalizable to all universities particularly the private ones in Afghanistan.The author recommends further studies on incivility in higher education of Afghanistan to substantiate the results of the current study.Prospective researchers should employ a larger sample from a larger number of public and private universities to obtain a deeper insight about incivility in higher education.They should collect data through various instruments including interviews and classroom observations.Future studies can focus on the correlation between student incivility and lecturers' job satisfaction and the impact of the intervention programs (e.g., workshops) on reduction of incivility at universities.Variables including gender, education degree, academic rank, and years of teaching experience should be examined.

Table 3 . Students' behaviors ranked from most to least uncivil by lecturers (n = 289)
Participant 2 stated, "It is obvious that students manifest uncivil behaviors if lecturers do not practice what they preach to their students."The vast majority of the participants (90%) believed that lecturers'

Table 4 . Lecturers' views of factors of student incivility
teaching methods (teacher-centered) led students to manifest incivility (e.g., sleepiness).Participant 10 noted, "A lecturer should go to the class well-prepared.If the lecturer is not well-prepared and does not have engaging activities, she/he encourages student incivility (e.g., sleepiness)."

Table 5 . Strategies to deal student incivility (n = 289)
university, I had received many calls right after final exams asking me to give extra scores for certain students.In a few cases, I was threatened to death if I did not offer a good score to certain students.If I had another option, I would have left my job at the university."Similarly, 7 participants believed that a student's incivility affected other students.It made them confused and lost their concentration, and negatively affected their learning particularly when incivility persisted in the classroom.Participant 7 stated, "Frequent occurrence of student incivility in the class negatively affects students.It destructs them, and it may cause them to miss class sessions."