Within education studies there have been calls for systematic attention to how learning is situated, to the notion of context and to experiential elements of learning. In recent decades theories of situated learning and cognitive learning theories have existed in a critical relationship to each other and by the twenty first century a major debate raged between the two positions (Sfard, 1998; Säljö, 2003, Hodkinson et al 2008). At a more sophisticated level situated learning theory offers an alternative to cognitive learning theories that draw on the root metaphor of acquisition. Instead it understands thinking as embedded in social and material practices and conceptualises learning through the metaphor of participation (Lave & Wenger, 1991).

In this context there is an on-going search for new ways to understand the situatedness of learning as well as its experiential qualities. In our recent work we have addressed this need by developing a framework that builds on Lave and Wenger’s ideas of situatedness and Hodkinssons’et. al (2008) call for moving on from the recent debate between cognitive and sociocultural theorists informed by theories of place, perception and the senses. Theories of place, perception and knowledge in human geography and anthropology, offer an ideal route through which to respond to this call. They offer accounts of place that acknowledge the relationship between spatial and temporal process (Massey 2005), and the embodied nature of learning, while advancing the agenda further to suggest that the senses and the environment are central to how we learn (e.g. Ingold 2000, Pink 2009).We call this framework sensory emplaced learning (Fors, Bäckström & Pink, 2013), through which we conceptualize how learning is situated in the dynamics between body– senses – material environments.

In this paper we draw from our respective ethnographic research projects on social and cultural informal learning among young people in two very different, albeit Swedish, contexts. Through our field work with people on the one hand publishing and talking about images and texts on a particular website and on the other hand practicing skateboarding, we have come to question the idea of knowledge as acquisition. This mainly cognitive metaphor for learning and knowing applies poorly to the practices of learning and knowing that we have studied. Instead, we argue for a theoretical development around the Swedish term “känsla”, (pronounced shensla). This Swedish word encompasses feeling, sensation, affect, emotion and style and derives from the verb känna – to feel, to sense.  Etymologically the word is closely related to one of the Swedish words for knowledge – “kännedom” (Wessén, 1982). Hence, the main objective of this paper is to develop the theoretical thinking that revolve around the Swedish conceptualisation of “känsla” which, we argue, could provide useful for analysing how we know, handle and make meaning of everyday life in and through our sensorial bodies emplaced in material contexts.

Ingold, Tim. 2000. The Perception of the Environment: Essays on Livelihood, Dwelling and Skill. London: Routledge. Lave, Jean and Wenger, Etienne. 1991. Situated Learning: Legitimate Peripheral Participation. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Marchand, Trevor. 2007. “Crafting Knowledge: The Role of ‘Parsing and Production of Skill-Based Knowledge among Masons.” In: M. Harris (ed.), Ways of Knowing: New Approaches in the Anthropology of Knowledge and Learning. New York: Berghahn Books. Pink, Sarah. 2009. Doing Sensory Ethnography. London: Sage.