The Covid-19 pandemic challenged educational practice and made clear that digitalization is not just about implementing digital technology, but also about transformations of social practices and organizations. Digitalization as a societal transformation, entails changes of conceptions, actions, and social relations, and questions taken-for-granted educational practices. An approach that seeks both knowledge and change of practice is professionals in educational settings and educational researchers to engage in action research, collaborating on - Transforming the future of education.

In 2017, the Swedish government adopted a national digitalization strategy for the Swedish school system, visioning it at the forefront of using the opportunities of digital technology. It expresses expectations on principals to develop their capabilities and strategies of leading digital development at local schools. The concept digital competence was introduced in the revised curricula of preschool education, which also clarifies the principals' responsibility of leading school development and create conditions for teachers to enact the new policy in educational practice.

In relation to the reforms, this study aims to describe and explore the processes of principals re-shaping leading practice in school improvement on digitalization in preschool education.

It focuses on what happened the first year of a two-year action research project, when principals investigated and changed their own leading practice. The data consists of audio recordings from meeting, where principals collaboratively shared understandings of leading digitalization and reflected on the outcomes of their leading actions.

The theory of practice architectures is used in the analysis of the principals' re-shaping of sayings, doings, and relatings on leading digitalization in early childhood education.

Preliminary findings show how the principals re-contextualizes understandings of digitalization in early childhood education by relating to other practices in the local, but also the national site. Practices identified as constitutive is; teaching practice; municipality administration; municipality politics; and the National agency for education. There were also changes in the ways the principals socially related to the preschool teachers, which also constituted the principals leading actions and the organization of school improvement.

The findings proposes a relational perspective on digitalisation in education, in order to understand it as processes of changing practices and organizational transformations, rather than implementation of technological devices. Further research in the project will focus on the principals' organization and leading actions on digitalization as school improvement.