This study aimed to explore students’ beliefs and dispositions that might influence their
mathematical self-beliefs and the experiences they perceive influence its development. The
findings demonstrate that individual student dispositions (particularly persistence) played a
major role in shaping their self-belief. While class-level factors, such as ability grouping,
did not have a detrimental impact on self-belief in this instance, it must be noted that there
were no students involved from the lowest-streamed mathematics classroom.