A standing dispute in theories of cognition concerns whether cognition unfolds as mental processing of representations or as distributed cognition, as social and non-representational. The disagreement can be seen as a dispute about the spatial location of knowing: does knowing take place in the mind or brain, or is it situated in social practice? I argue that approaches to distributed cognition overreact when rejecting that cognition is isolated and placed in the mind. Based on Latour’s concept “circulating references” I show that shifts in the spatial patterns of knowing appear in a maths classroom. The process of knowing shifts between distributed cognition being dispersed between a number of socio-material phenomena and being placed in the individual pupil mind. Instead of aiming for a theoretical foundation of knowing as located either in the mind or beyond, I suggest on the basis of the practice theoretical analysis presented that where, when and how cognition is located should be kept as an empirical question.
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