The aim of the article is to support critical consideration about what quality is and might be in ECEC. It argues that two different quality cultures – understandings of what quality is, how it may be understood and supported – intersect and create tensions in relation to the ECEC area in Denmark. One is analyzed as influenced by a transnational quality discourse, a specific regime of truth regarding quality as a phenomenon “out there” that must be defined and assessed to improve. This technical-instrumental quality culture needs to be balanced by a quality culture founded in pedagogy as a distinct perspective foundational for ECEC. Drawing on a continental tradition of pedagogy as a human science discipline the article offers a language and understanding of