ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on strategies for improving the 'heart' of applied education to ensure its future health and vitality. Field education forms the heart of teaching and learning in the applied social science disciplines. Past students refer back to their time in the field as memorable and life-changing. Few teaching and learning encounters can match the powerful experience of working with real clients. The extent to which theory and practice are related and integrated during fieldwork appears to be at best haphazard, and at worst non-existent. Research on field education has discovered that students frequently feel 'trapped, between tutors who are out of touch with current practice and supervisors who are out of touch with theory'. Field educators can address the current divide between theory and practice by combining the fieldwork learning experiences and teaching strategies outlined above with theory and methods taught in the classroom.
