A teacher wrote on the blackboard: Find 29 × 4. A student copied it on her…

Assessment for Learning (formative assessment) evaluates a student's grasp of the underlying process, not merely whether the final answer matches the problem as originally set. Procedural competence and an incidental transcription error are judged separately: a mistake in copying the numbers is a distinct issue from a mistake in the mathematical method, and diagnosing the cause of an error matters as much as scoring the response.

Here, the student copied 29 x 4 as 27 x 4 - a transcription slip unrelated to mathematics - but then multiplied 27 x 4 correctly, arriving at 108. Applying the concept above, the teacher's response should do two things: find out why the copying went wrong (inattention, a hard-to-read board, distraction) so it does not recur, and award full marks for the process, since the multiplication method itself has no error at all.

• Docking all marks scores the transcription slip as if it were a mathematics error, giving no credit at all for a multiplication that was carried out correctly.

• Reprimanding the student for inattention while still giving zero marks corrects behaviour but still denies credit for the flawless multiplication method she used.

• Awarding partial marks softens the penalty but still treats the response as substantially wrong, even though the procedural error rate is zero - the docked marks are misattributed.

Separating the transcription slip from the mathematical process - and crediting the process in full while addressing the slip on its own terms - is the response consistent with process-focused, diagnostic assessment.