This essay introduces the educational decentralization as an important issue of the global public reform that become in different kinds of relationship between the State and the civil society. To precise this subject, this article develops conceptual distinctions among concepts close to the decentralization area. In addition,advantages and disadvantages of the decentralization are mentioned. At the last, the author analyzes the background and legislation of the Peruvian educational decentralization. / Este ensayo aborda la temática de la descentralización educativa, asumiéndolacomo parte de una reforma global del Estado y que establece relaciones diferentescon la sociedad civil. Para precisar esta temática, se presentan en primer lugar algunasdistinciones conceptuales claves entre la descentralización y otros términosrelacionados, así como las ventajas y desventajas de este proceso de descentralización.Posteriormente, se plantean los antecedentes y el contexto normativo de ladescentralización educativa en el Perú.

The global spread of the neoliberal paradigm has propelled a recent worldwide trend of educational decentralization/centralization policies. Such policies constitute a contradictory ensemble that has shifted authority and accountability across national, provincial or state, municipal, and school levels. They have also been marked by contestation over the extent to which curricula are nationally standardized or locally defined. Education reform in Brazil in this regard has been shaped by a confluence of neoliberal and critical theoretical currents: enhance the nation’s economic competitiveness in the global market and redress pressing societal issues. Using Basil Bernstein’s concepts of classification and framing together with critical educational scholars’ conceptualizations of knowledge and knowledge in the official and enacted curriculum as conceptual and theoretical frameworks, this comparative ethnographic case study examines the nexus between curriculum, knowledge, and pedagogy in municipal schools in Brazil’s Northeast. In doing so it addresses gaps in comparative educational research on curriculum knowledge along with how educational decentralization/centralization policies are implemented in practice. The central thesis is that municipal school curricula knowledge dynamics—the classification and framing of knowledge in the official curriculum and the relation of such with what knowledge is legitimized in classrooms, how such is transmitted and analyzed, and why—in Brazil’s Northeast encompass a multilevel web of contradictions. This web spans incongruent ideologies, opposing elements of autonomy and accountability, conflicting pedagogical principles and practices, and a chasm between curriculum ideals and urban periphery municipal school realities.

The global spread of the neoliberal paradigm has propelled a recent worldwide trend of educational decentralization/centralization policies. Such policies constitute a contradictory ensemble that has shifted authority and accountability across national, provincial or state, municipal, and school levels. They have also been marked by contestation over the extent to which curricula are nationally standardized or locally defined. Education reform in Brazil in this regard has been shaped by a confluence of neoliberal and critical theoretical currents: enhance the nation’s economic competitiveness in the global market and redress pressing societal issues. Using Basil Bernstein’s concepts of classification and framing together with critical educational scholars’ conceptualizations of knowledge and knowledge in the official and enacted curriculum as conceptual and theoretical frameworks, this comparative ethnographic case study examines the nexus between curriculum, knowledge, and pedagogy in municipal schools in Brazil’s Northeast. In doing so it addresses gaps in comparative educational research on curriculum knowledge along with how educational decentralization/centralization policies are implemented in practice. The central thesis is that municipal school curricula knowledge dynamics—the classification and framing of knowledge in the official curriculum and the relation of such with what knowledge is legitimized in classrooms, how such is transmitted and analyzed, and why—in Brazil’s Northeast encompass a multilevel web of contradictions. This web spans incongruent ideologies, opposing elements of autonomy and accountability, conflicting pedagogical principles and practices, and a chasm between curriculum ideals and urban periphery municipal school realities.