He recommended and practiced a "school of the people" methodology, in which children were no longer passive receivers, but actively participated in the management of their learning, methods, forms of relations and the everyday life of the class: all of which he called institutions (in the sociological sense).
As a teacher in 1950, Oury reacted to what he saw as the deplorable state of the French educational system: "overloaded classes", "colossal school sizes", and "absurd regulations".
By 1958, following on the initiatives of institutional psychotherapy led by his brother Jean Oury, François Tosquelles, and Lucien Bonnafe, Fernand Oury founded the discipline of institutional pedagogy, the object of which would be the progressive analysis of liberating means of education.
Perhaps the most well-known name in the field of institutional pedagogy, Oury maintained an open relationship with respect to defining the scope and practice of teaching.
In 1978, Oury and others established CEPI, the Collective of Teams of Institutional Pedagogy (French Le Collectif des Équipes de Pédagogie Institutionnelle), and the MPI, Association for the Support of Institutional Pedogagy (Association Maintenant la Pédagogie Institutionnelle), both still in existence.