This paper explores the value of different paradigms to explain dispositions towards mathematics among primary school students from different social backgrounds. As part of a larger project designed to elicit students’ thinking and attitudes towards mathematics, we seek to develop an explanatory model for the socially-differentiated outcomes in students’ responses. The three paradigms – psychology, sociology and post-modernism – form the basis of the paper where the data we collected from three geographically close but socially different schools were analysed.