The development of new requirements for social work education has been accompanied by a series of projects to resource curriculum development for all nine schools of social work in Scotland. As part of this process, the authors of this paper undertook a series of projects with the aim of identifying and developing new assessment methods. The initial phases involved both a comprehensive literature review of assessment methods used in social work education, and a practice audit of assessment methods currently in use by schools of social work in Scotland. One outcome of these initial phases was the identification of the potential for the development of a critical incident analysis framework as a learning, teaching and assessment tool. Although critical incident analysis was first developed to assist analysis of high risk situations, it has subsequently been used for a range of purposes, including the analysis of cross-cultural misunderstandings, role conflict sexuality and communication issues. This paper will summarise the research literature on critical incident analysis, before describing and analysing the development of the tool. It will report on two demonstration projects in which students used the tool. The first of these involved 10 MSW students who were encouraged to use critical incident analysis regularly throughout their final practicum both to facilitate their own learning and as a basis for formative assessment. The second project involved teaching critical incident analysis to new undergraduate social work students as part of their introductory course 'Learning to Learn'. The assessment of this course involved a portfolio of which a critical incident analysis was an optional component. An evaluation of the use of the critical incident analysis framework involved interviews with a range of stakeholders including students and practice teachers and written examples of critical incident analyses produced by students. While acknowledging that further research is required, on the basis of these demonstration projects, there seems to be some support for the idea that critical incident analysis can be used as a learning, teaching and assessment tool which can address the learning needs of a wide range of students with diverse abilities both in the classroom and in practicum settings. The paper will conclude by discussing some conceptual issues associated with developing and evaluating new methods of assessment in social work education.