MAV Life Member, MERGA Honorary Life Member, mentor, colleague, and friend
The Mathematical Association of Victoria mourns the passing and celebrates the life of Professor Ken Clements, an inspirational educator, scholar, mentor and MAV Life Member whose influence on mathematics education in Australia and beyond will endure for generations. A graduate of the University of Melbourne, Ken was an Honorary Life Member of both MAV and the Mathematics Education Research Group of Australasia (MERGA).
March 1987 as new editor of Vinculum
There will be two memorial services held in honour of Ken:
Toowoomba Service
A memorial service will take place in Toowoomba on Saturday, 7 March at 10:30am (Queensland time). This service will be live-streamed. Burstows Funerals in Toowoomba has provided the streaming link on Ken’s page. To locate it, visit the Burstows website, search for McKenzie Clements under “In Our Care,” and his page will appear. Those who wish to do so are warmly invited to leave a message under the “Condolences” section.
The direct link to the service is here.
Melbourne Service
A second memorial service will be held in Melbourne on Tuesday, 31 March at 11:00am at Paisley Street Baptist Church, now known as Footscray Baptist Church. This church played a significant role in Ken’s early life, and it remained an important place for him and his family.
Ken’s journey in education speaks to talent nurtured by care and opportunity. As a student at University High School, he once considered leaving at the end of Year 10; no one in his family had studied beyond that point. His mathematics teacher, Eric McLean (later an MAV Treasurer), visited Ken’s parents in Footscray to encourage them to keep him at school. The family did not have a phone at the time; a neighbour’s number was listed for contact. That act of belief and advocacy helped change the course of Ken’s life, and, in turn, the lives of thousands of students and teachers he later influenced.
In 1960, Ken began at The University of Melbourne on a Victorian Education Department teaching studentship, studying Pure Mathematics and History. He later undertook a PhD in Education with Dr Edgar French, bringing the historian’s care for context together with a mathematician’s clarity and precision.
Ken began his career at Altona North High School teaching Mathematics and Physics, then at Euroa High School, followed by Waverley High School before resigning from the Education Department and taking up a position as Head of Mathematics at the newly formed to Yarra Valley Church of England Grammar School (now YVGS). Around this time, he joined MAV Council, marking the beginning of a lifelong contribution to the Association and the profession. It was only a matter of time before he was appointed to Monash University in Mathematics and Special Education, where he became a touchstone for thoughtful, research011informed practice.
Read more about how he influenced students:
https://www.yvg.vic.edu.au/inspired-by-yarra/ross-emslie
https://gwern.net/doc/iq/high/smpy/1984-clements.pdf
After Monash, Ken taught at Prince Alfred College while preparing for Christian missionary service in India. He was then a Lecturer, Senior Lecturer and Associate Professor at Deakin University, and a full professor at the University of Newcastle and at Universiti Brunei Darussalam. A fond memory from 1982: during occasional drop-ins to the Clarkes’ home in The Basin, he delighted in “teaching” their two-year-old daughter Belinda to answer “two” whenever asked, “What’s the cube root of eight?”
On a personal note, Ken greatly influenced the Clarke family. During Doug Clarke’s DipEd year, Ken’s pointed question, “When are you starting your master’s?”, prompted Doug to begin in his second year of teaching. Ken later employed Barb, Doug, and David Clarke as tutors in mathematics education at Monash, at one point all at once, making for exciting, formative years.
From 2005 to 2019, Ken served as a professor in the Department of Mathematics at Illinois State University (ISU). There, together with his wife and long-time collaborator Professor Nerida Ellerton, he deepened a shared passion for the history of mathematics, especially the history of school mathematics. Ken and Nerida spent countless hours in archives across the United States and England, including Harvard University, Cambridge University, the British Library, and the Library of Congress, locating and analysing original documents. In his lectures and writing, He was active at the Mathematics Education Centre (MEC) at the Papua New Guinea University of Technology (Unitech) during the late 1970s and early 1980s. Ken loved to share vivid stories of “meeting” Abraham Lincoln, Isaac Newton, and Nathaniel Bowditch through their manuscripts, always drawing out clear implications for the teaching and learning of mathematics in schools.
Some forty years ago, he played a formative role in the creation of MERGA, helping to shape a professional community that continues to bring together researchers and practitioners across our region. In 1976, inspired by the recent formation of ASERA, John Foyster (then at ACER) approached Ken Clements at Monash about creating a national community for mathematics education research. Notices went out late in 1976 (often simply to “Mathematics Lecturers at…”), and the inaugural national conference was held at Monash in May 1977, drawing about 100 participants, setting the pattern of rigorous, annual gatherings. A post-conference meeting affirmed MERGA’s formation, slated the 1978 meeting at Macquarie University, and set in train a highly valued organsiation 50 years on.
Read on more information about the beginnings of MERGA: https://merga.net.au/wp-content/uploads/2023/11/Clements-Foyster.pdf
Over his career, Ken taught in numerous Victorian schools, served as a consultant and researcher across Australia and internationally, and authored and published extensively, work that is recognised and respected around the world. Many Australians are grateful for his wise counsel at pivotal moments in their careers.
Colleagues remember Ken as a generous mentor, a rigorous thinker, and a gifted communicator who never lost sight of the learner. As Professor Diane Siemon reflected:
“I was fortunate to meet him at Monash in 1973, and our shared love of mathematics, cricket, and history meant we always had something to have a chat about. He was a caring and insightful mentor and a passionate, gifted educator. Ken touched so many of us—he was truly inspirational. He will always be in my heart as a very special person.”
Ken remained proudly connected to his roots, a Footscray boy and lifelong Western Bulldogs supporter, carrying that sense of community into every professional role. Within MAV, he was a steady hand and a generous presence: a Life Member, a Council colleague, and a tireless advocate for better mathematics teaching and learning.
To Nerida and Ken’s family, we extend our deepest sympathies. MAV will pay formal tribute to a wonderful leader in mathematics education in Australia and beyond, and we will share details with members so the community can honour his memory together.
Vale, Professor Ken Clements. Your wisdom, kindness, and example will continue to guide us.
Thank you to the various MAV Members and Life Members who contributed to this.
A message from Nerida Ellerton:
I have been touched deeply by the many personal messages of tribute for Ken, and by tributes that have circulated online. I feel very privileged and humbled by my experiences of working with Ken as a colleague and friend for 40 years, with 20 of those years as his wife and a part of our joint families. For these past 20 years we did everything together. If we weren’t teaching our respective classes, we would plan together what we would teach the next day. We shared the challenges of matching the curriculum to our students’ needs, as we revelled in the excitement that comes with students succeeding in learning and enjoying the mathematics that they had not loved or understood before.
Together we shared the fascination of unravelling the many intricacies about the cyphering tradition as reflected in students’ handwritten mathematics books. We were passionate about visiting the areas in which students had written their books, as we tried to re-live the experiences that they must have had in the 17th through to the 19th centuries in North America. Ken had vision and foresight of what to teach and what to research. He was never afraid to ask probing questions about the directions that we were taking, or of challenging his students to rethink or reinterpret what they were researching. Above all, he cared for his students and his colleagues. He was patient yet firm and always encouraged them to pursue their dreams as teachers, teacher educators, or researchers.
When working at Illinois State University, any break from teaching would find us either at conferences or in the archives of some of the major universities or libraries from the mid-west to the east coast of the US. We would drive long distances across the US to achieve this. It was like a holiday for us where we could discuss, explore and stretch the boundaries of understanding as far as we could. Sometimes we slipped in a real “holiday”—one moonlit night when we were driving from Bloomington Illinois to Philadelphia, the road was good, the traffic sparse, and we said to each other, “Let’s detour via Niagara Falls” So we drove all night to reach Niagara Falls in time for breakfast. In the UK, we were both keynote speakers at conferences at Oxford University—giving us the opportunity to scour the archives of the Bodleian Library, the London Metropolitan Archives, the National Maritime Museum and Caird Library at Greenwich, and the British Library. All of these archival explorations added small pieces to the puzzles of history that we were trying to piece together.
I share some of these personal memories to give readers a glimpse of Ken behind the scenes. He was, in fact, a very special gift to us all. It is my hope that his many legacies will live on, not just for the mathematics and mathematics education communities, but for his family, and for all who knew him as a colleague and a friend.
Goodbye Ken, I will miss you so very much.
