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.