The development of critical thinking is an essential aim in social work curricula, similar to all higher education programmes. Learning environments that effectively stimulate the development of critical thinking are hence of key importance. This paper starts with a small-scale review of the empirical research on learning environments in social work that aims at developing critical thinking in view of gaining insight in the effectiveness of the used approaches. The results indicate that almost all studies had learning environments combining approaches. The review also points at the limited number of empirically sound studies on critical thinking in social work curricula. Therefore, a research agenda is proposed, in order to improve the understanding of critical thinking education within social work and beyond.