This article is a response to the need for comparative and critical studies of preschool as a local practice and examines the recontextualization of quality in Early childhood education and care. The aim of this meta-ethnographic study is to investigate how neoliberal policy discourses on quality are recontextualized and embedded in local early childhood and care institutional practices. A central concept in the analysis is recontextualization, and our pre-understanding of how neoliberal policy discourses are travelling and transformed from official to local policy that is embedded in the preschools’ work with quality as an institutional practice.

The findings show how neoliberal policy discourses on quality is recontextualized, transformed and embedded in local institutional practices with different results and responses. The analysis uncovers three strategic, institutional responses as Enacting through acquiescence response, Defiance response as resistance and obfuscation of class, gender, and post-colonial perspective.