This chapter considers the professional status of instructional developers, the skills they need, and how those skills should be taught. Three differing approaches are discussed and critiqued: the specific skills approach; an approach which advocates the addition of "higher level" skills to the list of specific skills; and an "underlying skills" approach. The underlying skills approach assumes that the internal thinking processes or cognitive strategies a developer uses to guide instructional development (ID) efforts are the most important skills. It is concluded that all three approaches should be incorporated into ID training, but that the underlying skills approach represents an important addition to the field. The text is supplemented by three figure and four tables. (27 references) (Author/EW)