Without shared understanding, hardly any group learning takes place. Though much has been written about
the essence of shared understanding, less is known about how to assess the process of reaching shared
understanding. Therefore, the study focuses on ways of assessing shared understanding. A conceptual
framework is described that makes a distinction between the process of reaching shared understanding and
the resulting shared understanding. The conceptual ideas lead to a coding scheme for observing the
processes of shared understanding and to the definition of product measures, among others a scale to assess
perceived shared understanding. Then an empirical study is presented, in which the model is applied. A
major conclusion is that it was hard to find reflective utterances in the protocols although the coding
scheme provided for them.