ACE (Active Collaborative Education) set out on its educational journey in October 2001. At the time, graduates of the college were enthusiastically accepted in the field, smoothly slipping into the school system and highly appreciated as 'good teachers'. However, this situation did not please this book's contributors. They wanted to see ACE graduates as different teachers, agents of change and innovation in their classrooms as well as in the wider circles of their society. It is against this background that the ACE program came into being – subversive in spirit, focusing on the process as much as on its end results, on dialogue instead of on competition, and on learning communities and participation as much as on individual engagement.