With teacher turnover costing the U.S. as much as $7 billion per year (National Commission on Teaching and America's Future, 2007), and the continuing demand for qualified teachers, it is imperative for schools to increase retention rates among their faculty (Ingersoll & Smith, 2003). Retention efforts are especially important among novice teachers, those who are in the first five years of their teaching career, because they leave the profession at higher rates than their more experienced counterparts (Keigher, 2010; Ingersoll, 2003). In the more challenging early years of teaching, novice teachers with a higher sense of teacher self-efficacy are more likely to persist and stay in the profession (Knobloch & Whittington, 2002). This suggests the importance of self-efficacy as a target for growth during teacher preparation, but little is known about how teacher self-efficacy develops in those who are just starting their careers. Traditionally, self-efficacy has been conceived not as a stable trait, but as a situationally bound construct based on information which is being drawn from a particular context (Bandura, 1986). Among new teachers who have spent little time in the classroom, self-efficacy is likely driven by a combination of factors, including experiences and skills in the classroom, knowledge of content and pedagogy, attitudes, and personal dispositions (Bandura, 1997; Gist & Mitchell, 1992; Woolfolk & Hoy, 1990). This study will address the gap which exists in the current understanding of pre-service teachers' self-efficacy development by examining the joint contribution of pre-service teachers' observed performance during student teaching, and more stable personal features of their personality and beliefs about how children learn, to their teacher self-efficacy upon completion of a teacher preparation program. (Contains 2 tables and 2 figures.)