Mentoring novices' teaching of historical reasoning: Opportunities for pedagogical content knowledge development through mentor-facilitated practice

•Mentoring can promote novices' teaching of historical reasoning aligned with reforms.•Conceptual and practical representations, approximations of practice key to mentoring.•Content mentors diagnose and develop novices' pedagogical content knowledge level.•Mentors' bi-level pedagogical content knowledge targets novice and student learning.

While worldwide policy attention turns to mentoring to develop new teachers' practice, researchers have not investigated mentoring exchanges that support novices' teaching of historical reasoning and pedagogical content knowledge (PCK) development. Drawing on case studies of U.S. mentor–novice pairs, authors ask: How, if at all, is the teaching of history represented in mentoring conversations? How, if at all, do mentoring exchanges support novices' teaching of historical reasoning? Authors illustrate how mentoring conversations can support PCK elements through guided conceptual and practical representations of disciplinary history instruction; and reveal a form of mentor PCK for diagnosing and supporting novices' PCK development.