Welcome to Journeyman Module Five – Planning, Building & Understanding Behavior

Getting the Most from This Module

As we continue through the Journeyman course, we're going to build on both our practical training skills and our understanding of the science of learning and behavior.

Journeyman Module Five begins with something that can make an enormous difference to successful training: planning ahead.

We'll consider the training methods available to us and explore how thoughtful planning can help us break a goal into achievable steps rather than simply starting to train and seeing what happens.

We'll revisit and develop our understanding of shaping and constructional learning, before moving into compound behaviors and behavior chains. You'll put these ideas into practice as you learn to train Open the Door and explore back-chaining as a systematic way of teaching sequences of behavior.

Later in the module, we'll turn our attention more directly to the science behind learning.

We'll explore behaviorism and meet some of the people whose work helped shape our current understanding of learning, including Pavlov, Thorndike, Watson, and Skinner.

We'll then examine respondent and operant conditioning, including inevitable responses and respondent conditioning procedures, before taking a closer look at the four operant conditioning quadrants.

Importantly, understanding how consequences can affect behavior does not mean that every procedure available to us is one we should choose to use. We'll consider these processes through the lens of effective, ethical, force-free training and learner welfare.

Toward the end of the module, we'll consider crate training, including both its potential benefits and circumstances in which using a crate may not be appropriate. We'll then use In Your Crate as another opportunity to apply our developing knowledge of compound behavior.

As always, we encourage you to watch each recorded lesson before spending a few minutes reading any accompanying notes.

The written resources are designed to complement the recorded lessons rather than simply repeat them. Depending on the topic, you may find:

• Lesson Notes → How and why. These expand on the practical concepts and training principles introduced in the lesson.
• Additional ABA Notes → The science behind it. Where appropriate, these explore relevant concepts from applied behavior analysis in greater depth.
• Professional Practice → How to apply it with real clients. Where appropriate, these help bridge the gap between understanding a concept yourself and successfully applying or explaining it when working with pet dog guardians.

Not every lesson will include every type of resource. We'll include them where they genuinely add value.

Enjoy Journeyman Module Five – and continue thinking not only about the behavior you want to teach, but how you can construct a training plan that helps the individual learner succeed.

What Will We Explore in This Module?

Journeyman Module Five combines training planning and methodology, behavior construction, learning theory, and practical application.

We'll explore:

Planning & Constructing Behavior

• Planning Ahead – considering the desired outcome and developing a thoughtful route toward it before training begins.
• Training Methods – examining different ways we can establish and develop behavior.
• Shaping – reinforcing successive approximations toward a training goal.
• Constructional Learning – focusing on building the behaviors and skills we want the learner to have.
• Compound Behaviors – understanding behaviors made up of more than one component.
• Behavior Chains & Back-Chaining – exploring how individual responses can be linked together and how teaching from the end of a chain can help us construct a sequence.

Putting the Planning into Practice

We'll apply these concepts while teaching:

• Open the Door – using planning and behavior construction to develop a practical compound behavior.
• In Your Crate – bringing multiple elements together into another useful compound behavior.

These exercises give us opportunities to think beyond Can I train this? and consider what component behaviors are required, in what order they need to occur, and how our reinforcement strategy can support the finished behavior.

Understanding the Science of Learning

We'll then explore some of the foundations underlying modern behavior science:

• Behaviorism – considering the development and influence of the scientific study of behavior.
• Pavlov, Thorndike, Watson & Skinner – introducing some of the people and discoveries that contributed to our understanding of learning.
• Respondent Conditioning – examining inevitable responses and how relationships between stimuli can alter responding.
• Operant Conditioning – exploring how consequences influence the future probability of behavior.
• Reinforcement & Punishment – developing a precise understanding of positive reinforcement, negative reinforcement, positive punishment, and negative punishment.

Knowing how a learning process works is different from deciding whether we should intentionally use it. Throughout these lessons, we'll continue to consider the learner's emotional experience, welfare, agency, and our responsibility to select humane, effective training strategies.

Crates, Training & the Individual Learner

We'll also examine crate training, including potential advantages and important circumstances in which a crate may not be an appropriate choice.

Rather than treating crate use as automatically good or bad, we'll consider the individual dog, the purpose of the crate, the way it has been introduced, the dog's behavior and emotional response, and the wider context in which it is being used.

Finally, in Bringing It All Together, we'll connect planning, training methodology, learning theory, and practical application.

Throughout the module, keep asking yourself:

What exactly am I trying to teach?

What smaller behaviors or skills does the learner need first?

How will my training procedure affect both behavior and emotional responding?

And is there a more effective, efficient, and learner-centered way to reach the goal?