There are records of both Tinbergen's university teaching and his invitation and public lectures. Almost all the university teaching material relates to Tinbergen's career at Oxford 1949-74, although there are a few duplicated items relating to earlier ethology practical work in the Leiden Zoological Laboratory. The Oxford material documents the animal behaviour courses he taught to zoology and psychology students, and, in a separate sequence, his contributions to the new Honour School of Human Sciences which admitted its first students in October 1970.

There is a chronological sequence of Tinbergen's invitation and public lectures 1955-1979, but this is by no means comprehensive even for the period covered and there are few fully prepared texts. The sequence can, however, be supplemented by a little material relating to Tinbergen's Oxford Inaugural Lecture March 1968 (MS. Eng. c. 3127/A.48) and German texts of a number of lectures prepared for publication in the 1970s (MS. Eng. c. 3139/C.152 - MS. Eng. c. 3139/C.160). There are, for example, the German texts of a lecture delivered by Tinbergen in Oxford 1946, and of his Royal Society Croonian Lecture 1972.