Fritz K. Oser is Professor of Educational Psychology and General Education at the Department of Educational Sciences. He served as a dean of the philosophical faculty and as president of the department. He was a fellow at the Harvard University working with Lawrence Kohlberg. He has worked in the beginning of his carrier extensively in the field of moral and religious development from where he received the Honorary Doctor of the University of Mainz and of the University of Helsinki. He received the Kuhmerker award of AME, the Liechtenstein Award, the Hans Aebli Award and the EARLI Lifetime-Award (European Association for Research in Learning and Instruction). He is the co-founder of the Leading house conception, new University Institutes that bring the VET and professional learning field to research. He was honored to spent a full year at the Center for Advance studies in Berlin. Today he is leader or co-leader of a couple of research projects like e.g. “The Impact of Negative Knowledge to Develop Rescue from Entrepreneurial Failure Competencies: An Intervention Study at the Upper-secondary Level”. Oser is a fellow of the American Educational research Association and a member of the National Academy of Education (USA). He is co-editor of the series “Moral Development and Citizenship Education” of Sense publishers with more than 12 volumes edited. He is on the advisory board of different scientific journals.

Professor Oser has been engaged in overlapping research topics like the quality of teaching where he developed the concept of “choreographies of instruction” and the theory of “advocatory quality measures”. He specializes in research on ethos of the teachers and the respective effects on students learning. In different IEA studies he represented Switzerland, so with respect to TEDs M, Civics, ICILs. His interest is also targeted towards learning from mistakes where he developed the concept of Negative Knowledge. One application of this concerns the failure of young enterprises where he studies young adults in situations of high and fragile risk taking.