In the "The Permaculture Orchard : Beyond Organic" Stefan Sobkowiak talks about training and pruning trees for fruiting. His approach focuses on training the trees with minimal pruning techniques which results in trees trained in a way that future pruning is light work when compared to trees that are only pruned and not trained.
Local city course would help to understand conventional pruning principles and techniques whether you agree and can apply them in your situation is another question.
I did a hort course that most of the techniques and strategies I don't ever use however it was valuable for helping improve my confidence (I did actually know what I was talking about before the course) and ability to improve my own techniques and strategies with that confidence.
