This paper builds on Ernest’s five ideologies for mathematics education in order to explore the socio-cultural buy-in of mathematical problem solving tasks within the context of private schools that are governed by the Egyptian national mathematics curriculum. The research contributes to the contextual understanding of teacher beliefs and school power dynamics that affect the adoption or rejection of a culturally foreign teaching ideology of problem solving. Findings from one teacher focus group revealed that the teachers had a good understanding of the features that align with a literature-based classification of problem solving tasks. Yet, a disparity was found between desired and existing best practices for classroom implementation of problem solving tasks. This disparity is argued to be a function of power tensions between inner and outer circles of contextual influence.