This study investigates a group of pre-service physics teachers' perceptions about the causes of problems in school experience through the attribution theory. The participants were thirteen pre-service physics teachers from a public university in Turkey. Data were collected through the interviews by requesting the participants to reflect their own problems encountered during school experience, and discuss the reasons for these problems. Audio-recorded interviews were transcribed and coded under six themes. The results revealed that (i) 1/3 of the attributions regarding the causes of problems in their school experience were internal, (ii) the internal and external attributions were mainly linked, and (iii) a limited number of attributions have an iterative relation with each other. Improvement of internal elements might be effective for preventing the external causes of the problems.