Addressed is the need in social work education to identify the skills required for effective practice, to develop instruments to measure these skills, and to design an approach to teach them effectively. In the first chapter, "Identifying the Worker Helping Skills," 27 communication, relationship, and problem-solving skills are described. The skills are presented using time as an organizing principle (the preliminary, beginning, work, and ending transition phases). The second chapter, "Measuring Helping Skills Using Client Feedback," describes the development of a consumer questionnaire in which clients provide their perceptions of their workers' skill levels. The third chapter, "Measuring Helping Skills Using An Observation System," discusses a second procedure designed to measure social work practice skill. The instrument is an observation system in which trained raters are able to categorize observed client and worker activity and translate these observations into profiles of interaction. The final chapter, "Teaching Practice Skills," addresses one aspect of teaching social work practice skills. Appendices include: social worker behavior questionnaire; observation social work; theory, practice, and research; social worker behavior questionnaire (individual item analysis); and the mediating theory. A bibliography is provided. (LC)