Informal Education Is Essential to Physics

This document, "Informal Education Is Essential to Physics: All recommendations, organized by change agent," provides recommendations to promote Informal Physics Education (IPE) as a recognized and essential practice within physics. The goal is a culture shift where IPE is widely acknowledged and supported.

The recommendations are organized by the change agent responsible for implementation:

1. Recommendations for individuals/individual programs:

• Structures: Advocate for structural changes that frame IPE as an essential activity worthy of resources.
• Engagement: Recruit and empower people to engage in and support IPE by tracking program effectiveness, aligning goals with funders, meeting with policymakers, inviting interest holders to interact with programs, consistently engaging community members, integrating IPE into research goals, and articulating relevant value propositions.
• Integrating Research-Based Practices: Leverage research to understand, develop, and advocate for IPE by clarifying audience and goals, engaging in continuous evaluation, aligning research with program goals and community needs, seeking broad expertise, engaging in dialogue, defining success in audience-relevant terms, collecting a variety of metrics, documenting impacts, and staying informed on IPE research.

2. Recommendations for departments and institutions:

• Structures: Leverage IPE's connection to service learning, integrate IPE with existing efforts to broaden participation, include and reward IPE work in hiring and promotion policies, allow IPE activities to fulfill service requirements, provide funding for IPE, establish recognition mechanisms for exemplary IPE programs and practitioners, create or expand community engagement offices, and obtain the Community Engagement Elective Carnegie Classification.
• Engagement: Invest in infrastructure for public engagement and evaluation, recognize IPE activities in tenure and promotion processes, integrate IPE into the curriculum for academic credit, meet with and invite policymakers/leaders to interact with IPE programs, acknowledge IPE career pathways, and obtain the Community Engagement Elective Carnegie Classification.
• Integrating Research-Based Practices: Hire faculty who research IPE, incorporate IPE evaluation and research into the curriculum, support graduate study of IPE, staff IRB offices with experts in community-based research, and establish recognition mechanisms for exemplary IPE programs and practitioners that use research-based practices.

3. Recommendations for informal STEM topical groups (e.g., JNIPER):

• Structures: Host a member directory to facilitate partnerships, publish a regular newsletter, provide toolkits and training for partnership-focused IPE programming, offer workshops on grant writing and evaluation, set standards for ethical and effective IPE practice and research, establish recognition mechanisms, publish IPE research "digests," and create mentorship opportunities.
• Engagement: Provide workshops on grant writing and evaluation strategies, highlight successful IPE programs and institutional practices that uplift IPE work, provide toolkits for partnership-focused IPE programming, organize forums to discuss IPE's role in educational goals, support strategic messaging, and connect K-12 education standards to IPE programming.
• Integrating Research-Based Practices: Publish IPE research "digests," facilitate practitioner-researcher connections, provide training and resources for evaluation and research, support strategic messaging to advocate for IPE using research findings, and convene the community to define key IPE research questions.

4. Recommendations for (inter)national organizations:

• Structures: Academic and commercial publishers should establish common, open-access publication venues for IPE work with multiple submission types; create dedicated IPE sessions at physics conferences in prime slots; and funding agencies should support IPE by requiring public engagement plans in grants, funding IPE programs directly, funding studies of public engagement, and directing graduate fellowship awards to include public engagement training. Federal structures should also be created to support national agencies in growing their participatory public engagement efforts.
• Engagement: Acknowledge IPE career pathways and legitimize the rhetoric around them, and physics societies should release policy statements on the importance of IPE.
• Integrating Research-Based Practices: Academic and commercial publishers should establish common publication venues for IPE work and build infrastructure for collective data sharing; create dedicated IPE sessions at physics conferences; and funding agencies should support IPE evaluation, assessment, and research through grant lines and by requiring public engagement plans with evaluation components in all grants.

The document emphasizes that IPE is an essential physics practice and encourages a multi-faceted approach to achieve its widespread recognition and support.