The purpose of this study was to examine the experiences of music teachers who teach or have taught in environments outside their personal backgrounds in order to understand how working in environments dissimilar from their personal backgrounds might influence feelings of teacher self-efficacy. The constituent elements of music teacher participants' personal backgrounds considered in the study included socioeconomic status, racial or ethnic identity, and perspectives of public education with regard to classroom management, expectations, and student achievement. One of the main themes throughout the study included cultural differences between teachers and students and the way these differences might affect student engagement in the classroom and teachers’ sense of self-efficacy. Study participants included two early-career teachers with less than five years’ experience and three experienced teachers with more than five years' experience and represented a demographically diverse cross-section of music teachers currently teaching in the public school system in Northern California. Bandura (1997) advanced Social Cognitive Theory and the subset of self-efficacy, which served as the theoretical framework for the current study. The methodological approach of case study was employed and expanded into a modified multi-case study analysis with an accompanying cross-case analysis. Study results revealed challenges that teachers experience when teaching in culturally unfamiliar environments, but also revealed that these challenges could be minimized by engaging with students, making connections, and developing mutually beneficial rapport between themselves and their students. The music teachers in the current study acknowledged that music teaching and learning can be used as a vehicle to make connections with culturally diverse student groups and that appealing to students’ home culture through music can enhance student engagement and academic achievement resulting in an increase in teacher self-efficacy. Teacher self-efficacy is related to health, job satisfaction, burnout, and attrition and the current study sought to add to the body of research that supports the notion that teacher self-efficacy is a critical aspect of success for teachers and learners
