Bayinaah Jones is a multitalented educator and educational administrator with a PhD in education and anthropology from the University of North Carolina. She most recently led a range of staff and faculty initiatives as the dean of language arts with California’s San Jose City College. To augment and inform her professional activities, Bayinaah Jones holds membership in multiple professional associations including the American Educational Research Association.

For more than a century, the American Educational Research Association (AERA) has endeavored to further common understanding of educational processes and to promote the value of research in the pedagogical arena. As part of these efforts, AERA sponsors multiple large events and smaller meetings each year.

The recent AERA/TESOL Webinar on Research-Practice Partnerships with Schools and Communities is a good example of AERA’s many educational initiatives. Partnering with the TESOL International Association, AERA brought together a panel of experts to discuss the ways in which research collaborations between institutions of learning and the communities that surround them can produce a positive effect on the learning processes of culturally and linguistically diverse students. Panelists for the AERA/TESOL Webinar on Research-Practice Partnerships with Schools and Communities included Madigan Peercy of the University of Maryland and Judy Sharkey of the University of New Hampshire.