Students graduating from early childhood programs at a southeastern urban university in June 1992 and June 1993 completed the Educational Attitudes Inventory and the Teacher Efficacy Scale upon entry to the program, before entry to a practicum experience with kindergarten students, and upon completion of both the practicum experience and a student teaching experience in grades 1-4. Forty-eight students were in a master's level initial certification program and 59 were in a traditional undergraduate program. Analysis of subjects' attitudes and performance in relation to the economic diversity and context of student teaching placements revealed that: (1) having a teacher-centered attitude had a negative relationship with personal teaching efficacy; (2) having a student-centered attitude was not a predictor of performance; (3) the key to improving student performance may be in reducing the teacher-centered dimension rather than increasing student-centered attitude; (4) being placed in schools serving larger numbers of poor children negatively affected students' practicum performance but positively affected student teaching performance, perhaps because students more skilled in teaching poorer children chose such placements for student teaching; (5) less than adequate context, relationships with cooperating teachers, and classroom role models had a negative effect on the performance of practicum students; and (6) school context was not a significant factor for student teaching performance. (Contains 26 references.) (JDD)