Heat transfer between the bubble and dense phases of a bubbling fluidized bed plays a very important role in the system performance, especially for applications involving solids drying and gas-phase combustion. However, very few experimental data are available on this subject in the literature. An experimental and modelling investigation on the heat transfer behaviour of isolated bubbles injected into an incipiently fluidized bed is reported in this paper. A new single-thermocouple technique was developed to measure the heat transfer coefficient. The effects of bed particle type and size, and bubble size on the heat transfer coefficient were examined. The heat transfer coefficient was found to exhibit a maximum as the bubble size increased in the bubble size range investigated. The bed particle size had a comparatively small effect on the heat transfer coefficient. A simple mathematical model was developed which provides good agreement with experimental data.