7.5 Chapter Summary

L-SONG is a fifteen-item student assessment of listening in the four contexts of self, others, nature, and Goddess-God-the Divine. The multi-sensory conceptualization of listening in L-SONG significantly broadens the scope of what is traditionally taught as listening to others by including the additional contexts of listening to self, nature, and Goddess-God-the Divine.

The primary purpose of L-SONG is to assess non-graded student learning in the Listening to the Song of Life course. Pedagogically, the goal of L-SONG is to provide feedback to students about their competencies in listening to the Song of life.

In this initial study, L-SONG’s psychometric properties show good reliability and predictive and expert validity. Several limitations of the current study include limited sample size, mono-instructor bias, the lack of a control group, and different units of measurement across items. Suggestions for addressing these limitations are included in future research in addition to proposing testing the concurrent validity of the scale. Finally, L-SONG provides teachers and students with a more creative, provocative, and magnanimous view of listening to the SONG of life.