The essay purpose is to investigate if there was an assessment culture in Karlstad in the 1950s. The examined period is thus 1950, and the essay is geographically delimited to Karlstad municipality to provide a small-town perspective. The material consists of archive material from Karlstad Teacher education seminar archives and Värmland middle elementary school inspector archives. There are primary sources, which is: elementary school inspectors' annual accounting reports and protocol of class conferences that have touched practice schools in Karlstad school district. The idea of ​​this essay is to access the tacit knowledge and thus find the 1950 idea and practice regarding the assessment, therefore, has also teaching plans been a part of the material. To fulfill this purpose, the essay started from a qualitative interpretive method where text analysis has been important.

Research in the subject is thin. However, there are clear signs that there was a national assessment culture in Sweden in the 1950s, it shows both the historical and educational research. But research does not show if teachers had embraced this assessment culture and that is why my interest grew to investigate this. The essays results do not indicate that any local assessment culture had occurred. The assessment culture cannot be seen in practice but its idea is easy to see. The tacit knowledge thus seems to prevail among teachers.