Curriculum and Didactics are two broad educational concepts with long roots that partly overlap but also have different orientations and emphases. This symposium aims at identification of those commonalities and differences, not meant tot increase definitional debate and opposition, but in order to arrive at suggestions about how these two different traditions may complement each other in addressing relevant problems in educational improvement.

To stimulate this discussion, four different perspectives will be chosen:

• Stefan Hopmann (Austria), departing from the field of Didactics and building upon his previous work with European and American colleagues about the relationship between Curriculum and Didactics, will analyze how didactical approaches may profit from a curriculum lens, with special attention to implications for conceptual understanding.
• Jan van den Akker (The Netherlands), departing from the domain of Curriculum and building upon his experience with curriculum research and development in many contexts, will explore how curriculum developers  may profit from expertise from and interaction with (especially subject matter) didactics.
• Birgit Pepin (Norway), departing from the subject matter of mathematics education and building upon recent international projects with many European colleagues, will address how both curriculum as well as subject matter didactics can contribute to improvement of mathematics education, with special attention to teachers'professional development.
• Edmond Law (Hong Kong), building upon his broad knowledge of recent curricular and pedagogical trends in Asian education, will analyze how the relationship between curriculum and didactics is seen and elaborated in a number of Asian countries.

After the four presentations, interaction between the autors and the audience will be sought, to stimulate a vivid discussion and to explore promising research issues and avenues where synergy between the two traditions can be expected.

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