Informal Education Is Essential to Physics

This document, "Informal Education Is Essential to Physics: Recommendations for JNIPER 2025," outlines recommendations for informal STEM topical groups like JNIPER to elevate Informal Physics Education (IPE) as an essential physics practice. The overarching goal is a culture shift to widely recognize IPE.

The recommendations are organized into three "levers":

• Lever 1: Structures Focuses on amplifying structures that frame IPE as essential and worthy of resources. This includes recommendations such as hosting a member directory, publishing a regular newsletter, providing toolkits and training for IPE programming (e.g., grant writing, evaluation strategies), setting ethical and effective IPE practice standards, establishing recognition mechanisms for exemplary IPE programs and practitioners, publishing IPE research "digests," and creating mentorship opportunities.
• Lever 2: Engagement of interested, influential, and impacted parties Identifies techniques for recruiting and empowering people to engage in and support IPE. This lever suggests highlighting successful IPE programs and institutional practices that uplift IPE work, providing toolkits for partnership-focused IPE programming, organizing forums to discuss IPE's role in broader educational goals, supporting strategic messaging to promote IPE buy-in, connecting K-12 education standards to IPE programming, providing workshops on effective grant writing, impact reporting, and evaluation strategies.
• Lever 3: Integrating Research-Based Practices in IPE Aims to leverage research to understand, develop, and advocate for IPE. Recommendations include publishing IPE research "digests," facilitating practitioner-researcher connections, providing training and resources around evaluation, assessment, and research (including qualitative/quantitative methods, IRB support, and a repository of resources), supporting strategic messaging with research findings, and convening the community to define key IPE research questions.