AbstractFor most of us working in this field, appropriate education has had to be gained almost entirely through learning on‐the‐job. It is rather like parachuting ill‐prepared and ill‐equipped into an unfamiliar, neglected, confusing territory to tackle tasks which are complex, poorly understood and looked upon with disdain and despair by many people.With this picture in mind, I have reviewed my own experiences since taking the leap five years ago, to crystallize out of them what seems to have been of most value and to be pertinent to a discussion on education in this field: recognizing that learning on‐the‐job, as a form of in‐service training, is desirable, necessary and inevitable, but when, how and the extent to which it is relied upon in a program of training, are critical questions for planners. I deal first with the bewildering array of items which confronts the initiate, all clamouring for immediate new knowledge, understanding, skills and action. These have to be sorted out into manageable categories, given an order of priority, and tackled as efficiently as possible by selective reading, consulting, visiting, recording, doing and, most importantly, thinking. Finally, I expose several ways of looking at aspects of this territory which I regard as helpful, even essential, for getting the complexities into perspective and having a framework for continu