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Research topic/aim: The aim of this study is to explore, analyse, and understand, how quality inspections by the Swedish Schools Inspectorateassess and control Swedish preschool principals’ responsibility for systematic quality work.There seems to be several reasons in policy and research for studying Swedish preschool principals' responsibility whenassessed and controlled against national goal standards. For example, that the preschool principal in Sweden has a key rolefor the preschool's systematic quality work (e.g., the Swedish Education Act, 2010:800; the Swedish National Bord forEducation, 2018), or that it seems to exist a gap between how policy is interpreted and the realisation of policy in thepreschool practice (e.g., Eriksson et al., 2018; Håkansson, 2016, 2019; Öqvist & Cervantes, 2018).

Theoretical framework: The analysis uses curriculum theory. The concept of curriculum alignment is used to analyse if and how preschool rincipal’sresponsibility for systematic quality work reported in quality inspections done by the Swedish School Inspectorate is aligned with the Swedish Education Act and the Swedish Curriculum for the preschool (Lpfö 18).

Methodological design: The design includes a qualitative comparative document study, and a within-document analysis as well as a cross-documentanalysis will be performed. Data consists of 141 reports from quality inspections reports of preschools done by the SwedishSchools Inspectorate between the years 2008-2023, the Swedish Education Act and the Swedish Curriculum för preschool(Lpfö 18).

Expected conclusions/findings: The study is expected to contribute with knowledge about curriculum alignment in relation to how the Swedish SchoolsInspectorate in their inspections interpret the Swedish Education Act (2010:800:354) and the Swedish curriculum förpreschool (2018) (e.g., the formulation arena) as well as how preschool principals in the quality inspections reports areexpected to realise the governing policies in the systematic quality work (e.g., realisation arena).

Relevance to Nordic educational research: The relevance to Nordic educational research is to be found in a knowledge contribution about how quality inspections by theSwedish Schools Inspectorate may influence, or even govern, preschool principals’ actions and decisions in practice.Knowledge that can be discussed in relation to similar research in other Nordic countries.