Rural, suburban, and urban schools: The impact of school setting on the efficacy beliefs and attributions of student teachers

•Rural, suburban, and urban student teachers showed enhanced efficacy beliefs.•Urban student teachers had lower efficacy scores than suburban student teachers.•Urban student teachers had lower Efficacy for Classroom Management subscores.•Urban and rural student teachers had lower Efficacy for Student Engagement subscores.•All three setting groups made more external attributions than internal attributions.

This study investigated student teachers' efficacy beliefs, to determine if school setting (i.e., rural, suburban, and urban) impacted teachers' sense of efficacy. Each setting group exhibited significant increases in teachers' sense of efficacy following student teaching. The urban student teachers exhibited significantly lower teachers' sense of efficacy. We also examined the attributions (external or internal) the student teachers made following student teaching. The urban student teachers did not make more external attributions than the rural and suburban student teachers, and the patterns of the self-serving attributional bias as well as the fundamental attribution error were apparent.