What is
learning?
This text is an excerpt from my book "Who's training Whom?", which I'm currently translating into English.
Learning happens all the time in our lives and in the lives of the animals under our care. When learning something new, an animal must also experience something which is previously unexperienced and thus create a history for itself from these experiences.
Learning is based on memory. In practice, the brain's way of
functioning changes and nerve cells react and transmit nerve impulses
differently than before. Learning, therefore, not only changes behaviour but
also, in the best cases, means the expansion of certain brain areas. In terms
of behaviour, learning means some relatively permanent change in an animal's behaviour.
Usually learning is beneficial, although an animal can also, of course, learn
negative non-acceptable things.
Learning
occurs passively, almost imperceptibly and unintentionally. Such learning is
quite mechanical and usually does not require any great effort. Active learning
on the other hand, sometimes requires quite significant effort; each of us
certainly has our own very personal experiences of this, some with a foreign
language, some with mathematics, etc. This kind of conscious learning is called
cognitive learning.
Every training session with your animal is uniquely valuable.
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| Create a trustworthy relationship with your animals |
In Finnish
we have a saying; "Learning and age all", which roughly means that
leaning happens while we age and gain wisdom - our learning builds up by our experience.
This applies for animals as well. It is an old saying and it holds deep wisdom
about learning of our own meta-skills. So, let's learn from the encounters that
our shared history has already taught for us, but let's keep our minds open to
new, pure interaction experiences.
Often, there is not
just one right way to achieve goals; the destination can be reached through
many different paths.
Development of one's own learning lifecycle.
It is
therefore good sometimes to stop and reflect on and review one's own behaviour
in a behaviour management or animal care situation. The matter can be examined
from many different perspectives, either the entire interior from a distance or
in more detail up close.
When seeking distance, it should be done broadly enough, so we can find our illogical ways of interacting with animals. Our influence on the behaviour of the animals under our care is the most significant. We may find explanations for the behaviours or patterns of our animal companions. Some may have been created by the environment or its influences, some we may have unintentionally reinforced ourselves without realizing what we have done.
From the
results of the final conclusions of behaviour management or care situations, we
can consider whether we have opportunities to modify the environment, or to
what extent by changing our behaviour or our ways of operating with the animal we
can achieve a desired change in behaviour of the animal being trained.
In short,
we are talking about our meta-skills. Meta-skills refer to the analysis of our
self-directed learning process, the regulation of our learning, and the
development of its life cycle. How do we learn to learn, to think and to
objectively observe our own learning and the development of our skills? Where
do we seek perspective for the development of our training skills and how do we
analyse it ourselves? They are thus skills that help us develop ourselves and
enable us to learn to be increasingly better trainers.
Meta-skills refer to
the analysis of our own self-directed learning process or working process, the
regulation of our learning, and the development of its life cycle, how we learn
to learn.
Good mastery of meta-skills leads to skilful metacognitive activity. Metacognitive activity is the implementation of these learned skills and strategies as trainers in learning, thinking, and problem-solving situations.
How can we in practice develop ourselves and our skills in practice?
Surely many
options immediately come to mind. Lectures, literature and the internet are all
excellent sources of information, it is worthwhile to acquire valuable
knowledge from them to support practical work. It is always constructive if you
find a channel to discuss challenges, successes and even failures related to
training techniques with your colleagues. Often it is different challenges and
the failures which elevates us to achieve goals that boost our creativity,
forcing us to seek innovative ways to reach our objectives. Often, there is not
just one correct way to achieve goals; the destination can be reached through
many different paths.
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| My animal training related book was published in 2023, in Finnish - now it's under translation into English. |
An excellent way to develop one's expertise is to use external individuals for assistance. Consulting an experienced trainer to evaluate one's own techniques is an excellent way to get constructive feedback on one's training principles and practices. On the other hand, I am also very grateful to all those students or so-called "laypersons" who, out of curiosity, have asked for more detailed explanations of the principles of my animal care or training techniques. In these situations, we are inevitably forced to explain to another person the reasons and foundations of our actions. At the same time, we articulate them out loud to ourselves, which can lead to excellent insights; we just need to be open enough to new ideas for developing our operations. Utilizing modern technology also offers many opportunities, for example, for developing our body language communication. Video recording a training session is, on the one hand, quite merciless and revealing but at the same time so very corrective and developmental.
The purpose
of all this is to achieve a way of operation where our communication with the
animal is clear, consistent and effective. We ourselves need feelings of
success. Similarly, our "behaviour" as a trainer or animal caretaker
develops through positive successes. Animal success strengthens our self-image
as trainers and develop our body language for calmer, more confident animal
handling, care and training. At this point, I also want to remind you of the
importance of our breathing technique, which will give strong message of firm existence; it
significantly affects our entire body's communication. Good experiences of
success also increase our motivation in animal training and encourage us to
seek more successes. We also dare to better respond to new challenging goals
that arise in the future, even those that might seem overwhelming to us without
these experiences.
In my consulting situations I have so many times enjoyed the discussions with my clients of our/their nonverbal expressions to their animal companions.
Being with animals and managing their behaviour is such a challenge but on its best is so very rewarding to us as well as to animals under our care.
If you think you need advise with you animal companions - contact me and I'd be delighted to be of assistance.
P.S.
... if you are a managing business or in such position at work or of a company; you can just change the wording in this text from trainer to director.. and this all is valid for you too.
Sincerely
Kai Mattsson
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