The paper introduces an educational approach developed by Eleanor R. Duckworth named Critical Exploration in the Classroom (section 1) and outlines the basic educational components central to this approach (section 2). After that selected finding so fan in-depth case study conducted in Professor Duckworth’s higher education classroom at Harvard Graduate School of Education in the United States will be presented. The empirical case study investigated how the learning environment in the classroom was designed to support deep exploratory learning exploring both, curriculum design and pedagogy (section 3). As a result, pedagogical implications on how educators can use their know-ledge to help students learn will be outlined (section 4).