By combining service, reflection, and connected, interpersonal learning, students develop an identity that is grounded on mutual responsibility and a personal understanding of democracy. Ethics, Reflection, Purpose, and Compassion: Community Service Learning John Saltmarsh There is a profound transformation unfolding in higher education. The para- digm from which higher education is emerging is one characterized by “sepa- rate knowing” (Belenky, Clinchy, Goldberger, and Tarule, 1986), which is based on specialized knowledge and disciplinary categorization of information and ideas. It is presided over by faculty whose authority rests on their superior knowledge, which they impart to receptive students. That authority is exer- cised in classrooms that center the teacher as the focus of learning, reward retention of abstract information, and legitimize distancing the knower from the construction of knowledge. Values become cognitive constructs rather than personal beliefs, and moral education is based on impersonal standards and procedures for establishing justice. Separate knowing is emphasized in insti- tutions where academic affairs is separate from student affairs, as if the cogni- tive development of students could be separate from their affective and behavioral growth. In the world of separate knowing, universities are removed from and unrelated to the communities and neighborhoods in which they are located. In a framework of separate knowing, learning is considered the process of depositing information. It happens only in the separate world of the school and is believed to cease with graduation. Life is what comes after edu- cation. The paradigm challenging separate knowing is one characterized by “con- nected knowing” (Belenky, Clinchy, Goldberger, and Tarule, 1986). The purpose of this chapter is to contrast separate and connected knowing as a means by which to understand the transformations that higher education must undertake NEW DIRECTIONS FOR STUDENT SERVICES, no. 77, Spring 1997 © Jossey-Bass Publishers 81